Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 248
ISBN: 9781781726983
Publication date: March 13, 2023
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 288
ISBN: 9781781726990
Publication date: February 20, 2023
Price: £7.99
Eager for glory as an explorer in the further reaches of the Empire Hilary Durwood is duped into undertaking a semi-mythical mission, in semi-mythical lands. After many adventures and setbacks he returns to Victorian London destitute, dismayed at having killed someone, and seeking revenge against the Gentleman Explorer who set him up. Meanwhile a serial killer, The Slasher, stalks the streets and inevitably their paths will cross…
Hilary has survived dangerous islanders who are intent on eating human flesh, a huge cat with a wooden leg, a giant centipede, and a man who is determined to taste every animal on the planet. He has been fed by birds bringing hallucinogenic berries and held up the crumbling Tower of Ectha. And now Hilary must write his final confession.
This dark comedy thriller is a page-turning and riotous engagement with the notions and myths of Empire, the nature of reality, the power of narrative and the gullibility of those who wish to believe, even in the face of the truth.
Euron Griffith
Born in Bangor, Euron Griffith has a Creative Writing MA from the University of Glamorgan. Between 2011 and 2016 he published three novels in Welsh – Dyn Pob Un (about a TV researcher who becomes an accidental serial killer), Leni Tiwdor (about a private eye who is also a record collector) and Tri Deg Tri (about a hitman who can talk to animals), and a children’s novel Eilian a’r Eryr. His English language short story collection, The Beatles in Tonypandy appeared in 2017 from Dean Street Press, and in 2020 Seren published his first novel written in English, Miriam, Daniel and Me. His poetry has also been published in The Spectator.
Griffith lives in Cardiff, where he works as a radio and TV producer and plays in a band. His memoir, revolving around t-shirts he has owned at various points in his life, was published by Seren in 2024.
‘[the narrator] has a prim, scholarly way of expressing himself, even in extremis, that promises much humour, unintended on his part but very much intended on the author’s … In the first half of the novel, the humour lies in incongruity and preposterousness … In the second half, back in London, the humour becomes considerably more satirical.’
Sheenagh Pugh
This restlessly inventive novel … an entertaining mix of ripping yarn and pastiche Victorian global adventure, set at a time of gentlemen’s clubs and smoking briar pipes, when the sun hadn’t yet begun to set on the British Empire … The Confession of Hilary Durwood is an unashamedly playful novel which nevertheless looks teasingly a such matters as lies and truth, the barbarity of civilization and the mendacity of the media.
Jon Gower, Nation Cymru
