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School of Welsh

Lecturer in Welsh publishes two novels

Llun o Dr Angharad PriceMarch was a busy month for Dr Angharad Price who is Senior Lecturer at the School of Welsh. In early March she published her third novel Caersaint, which is the fruit of nearly four years’ writing.

‘Caersaint is an imaginary town,’ said Angharad, ‘although many aspects ofit are inspired by present-day Caernarfon (where I live). But I hope that the novel discusses issues relevant to people across Wales, for example, the tension between tourism and heritage.’

A light-hearted and humourous novel, it tells the story of a young man named Jaman Jones who returns to his native town in order to live a better life. ‘To some extent it is a parody of the Victorian novel of self-improvement,’ declared its author. ‘The protagonist is both an unlucky and lucky young man whose main aim is to free himself from his own upbringing. You’ll have to read the novel to find out if he succeeds. What he is free enough to do is to appreciate the richness of life around him on the streets of Caersaint, despite the poverty.’

There is no doubt that Caersaint is a different creation from Angharad’s earlier novel, O! Tyn y Gorchudd, the fictional autobiography which won the Prose Medal at the 2002 National Eisteddfod.  Eight years on, it has now been translated into English by the distinguished novelist Lloyd Jones, the author of the prize-winning novels Mr Vogel and Mr Cassini, and the extraordinary Welsh novel Y Dŵr (‘The Water’).

Image of The Life of Rebecca JonesThe translation of Angharad’s novel is entitled The Life of Rebecca Jones and the book includes both texts, that is to say, the original Welsh novel on the one side and the English translation of the other. The book was lunched at the Palas Print bookshop in Bangor in late March.