All titles in our Mabinogion series are just £5 this weekend in honour of St David’s Day. Get the full Box set for £60 or an exclusive limited edition signed box set for just £80. (Feb 28th – March 2nd)
Over the past 5 years, Seren have commissioned 10 top authors to re-write the ancient stories of the Mabinogion as modern day tales. We have reached the orbit of Mars, the Tower of London and the edges of India, travelled in time to WW2 and forward to the near future, seen Iraq in drug-addled dreams, and viewed Wales aslant, from its countryside to its council estates. We have touched on nation-building and personal tragedy, bravery and betrayal.
Titles in the Series Include:
White Ravens – Owen Sheers
After being wounded in Italy, Matthew O’Connell is seeing out WWII in an obscure government department spreading rumours and myths to the enemy. But when he’s given the bizarre task of escorting a box containing six raven chicks from a remote hill farm to the Tower of London, he becomes part of a story over which he seems to have no control.
The Ninth Wave – Russell Celyn Jones
Pwyll, a young Welsh ruler in a post-oil world, finds his inherited status and military obligations hard to take. Not only this but he’s never quite sure how he’s drawn into murdering his future wife’s fiancé, losing his only son and switching beds with the king of the underworld… In this bizarrely upside-down, medieval world of the near future, life is cheap and the surf is amazing; but you need a horse to get home again down the M4.
The Meat Tree – Gwyneth Lewis
A dangerous tale of desire, DNA, incest and flowers plays out within the wreckage of an ancient spaceship in The Meat Tree: An elderly investigator and his female apprentice hope to extract the fate of the ship’s crew from its antiquated virtual reality game system, but their empirical approach falters as the story tangles with their own imagination. By imposing a distance of another 200 years and millions of light years between the reader and the medieval myth, Gwyneth Lewis brings this tale of a woman made of flowers closer than ever before, perhaps uncomfortably so. After all, what man can imagine how sap burns in the veins of a woman?
The Dreams of Max & Ronnie – Niall Griffiths
Iraq-bound squaddie Ronnie takes something dodgy and falls asleep for three nights and has the strangest of dreams. He watches the tattoed tribes of modern Britain assemble to speak with a grinning man playing war games. Meanwhile Cardiff gangsta Max is fed up with life in his favourite nightclub, Rome, and chases a vision of the perfect woman to far flung parts of his country.
The White Trail – Fflur Dafydd
Life is tough for Cilydd, after his wife Goleuddydd, who is nine months pregnant, seems to vanish into thin air at a supermarket one wintry afternoon. Cilydd gets his cousin, Arthur – a private eye who has never solved a single case – to help him with the investigation. So begins a tale of intrigue and confusion that ends with a wild boar chase and a dangerous journey to the House of the Missing.
The Princes Pen – Horatio Clare
The Invaders’ drones hear everything and see all. England is now a defeated archipelago but somewhere in the higher ground to the far west, insurrection is brewing. The self-styled kings of Wales, Ludo and Levello, take prisoners, but can they free the British Isles without the help of Islamic princess Shakira and the power of Pakistan, the only other country remaining in the free world?
See How They Run – Lloyd Jones
Small-minded academic Dr Llwyd McNamara has a grant to research Wales’ biggest hero, rugby star Dylan Manawydan Jones – Big M. But as the doctor plays with USB sticks in his office, the gods have other plans… Llwyd discovers a link between Big M and his own life, in the shape of the luxurious but strange Hotel Corvo on the west Wales coast. But from here things only get stranger. Are claims to a link between Big M and the Celtic myths of the past just a load of academic waffle… and what is the significance of the mouse tattoo?
Bird, Blood, Snow – Cynan Jones
Hoping to give him a better start, Peredur’s mother takes him from the estates in the hope he won’t suffer the same fate as his father and brothers, allof whom are dead, jailed or missing. But the world won’t be held at bay. When local kids cycle into his life Peredur heads after them, accompanied by the notion of finding Arthur – an absent, imaginary guardian. Used to making up his own worlds, he’s something of a joke. Until he seriously maims one of the older kids. And that’s when the trouble starts.
The Tip of My Tongue – Trezza Azzopardi
When her mother dies, little Enid has to go to stay with posh relations the Erbins. Her father is struggling to cope, and Enid finds herself having to rely on her native wit and mother’s advice to survive Uncle Horace, Aunty Celia and above all their teenage son Geraint
Fountainville – Tishani Doshi
Fountainville is a strange, lonely town on the edge of everywhere, with its own healing secrets, as revealed by Luna, assistant to Begum, the Lady of the Fountain. Under their care the town flourishes, but when the mysterious Mr Knight arrives at their house of 24 women, everything begins to change. Aided by Rafi, the giant of the woods and the all-action Leo, events begin to unravel fast for Luna and Begum.
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