Exploring Wales: 10 books from the land of song

A list of books to read from Wales

The Mabinogion is a collection of medieval tales that intertwine myth, history, and magic. From the tragic story of Blodeuwedd to the heroic adventures of Pwyll and Rhiannon, these tales offer a glimpse into the ancient soul of Wales.

Often compared to the Arthurian legends, these stories are a cornerstone of Welsh literature, and must-read for anyone wishing to understand the mythical foundations of Welsh culture.

We could also co for a modern classic that reimagines one of those ancient tales.

The Owl Service is a haunting story of three teenagers entangled in an ancient curse. Set in a remote Welsh valley, the novel brilliantly weaves together themes of class, identity, and the inescapable pull of history. Its eerie atmosphere and deep connection to Welsh myth make it unforgettable.

This is called a modern classics, but I had never heard of it. The author is English.

Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons – at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory

An immediate bestseller on publication in 1939, How Green Was My Valley quickly became one of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century. I think it is in my physical bookshelf somewhere, but I have never read it. Now could be a good chance to do so.

For a woman’s perspective on rural Wales, we could for for this one. A poetic work of fiction on the one hand, an autobiography on the other, The Life of Rebecca Jones is a powerful, meditative work on one family’s passage through the twentieth century. In the early years of the last century, Rebecca is born into a rural community in the Maesglasau valley in Wales; her family have been working the land for a thousand years, but the changes brought about by modernity threaten the survival of her language, and her family’s way of life.

Kate Roberts was one of the foremost Welsh-language authors of the twentieth century and is known as Brenhines ein llên (“The queen of our literature”), so of course I must include here here.

The passionate and headstrong Jane grows up and grows old, struggling to raise a family of six children on the pittance earned by her slate-quarrying husband, Ifan. Spanning the course of 40 years, this story traces the contours not only of one vividly-evoked Welsh family, but also of a nation coming to self-consciousness. Beginning in the heyday of Methodist fervor and ending with the carnage and disillusionment of the World War I, this book delves into a different culture and world.

When railway signalman Harry Price suddenly suffers a stroke, his son Matthew, a lecturer in London, makes a return to the border village of Glynmawr. As Matthew and Harry struggle with their memories of personal and social change, a beautiful and moving portrait of the love between a father and son emerges.

The dryly precocious, soon-to-be-fifteen-year-old hero of this engagingly offbeat debut novel, Oliver Tate, lives in the seaside town of Swansea, Wales. At once a self-styled social scientist, a spy in the baffling adult world surrounding him, and a budding, hormone-driven emotional explorer, Oliver is stealthily (and perhaps a bit more nervously than he’d ever admit) nosing his way forward through the murky and uniquely perilous waters of adolescence. 

A hilarious and irreverent coming-of-age story, where Dunthorne’s witty and quirky prose captures the awkwardness and charm of teenage life, while offering a fresh and modern perspective on Welsh culture.

Witty and quirky is something I love. This sounds like I would like it.

An incongruous ice-cream van lurches up into the Welsh hills through the hail, pursued by a boy and girl who chase it into their own dark make-believe world, and unfurl in their compelling voices a tale which ultimately breaks out of childhood and echoes across the years. Pigeon is the tragic, occasionally hilarious and ultimately intense story of a childhood friendship and how it’s torn apart, a story of guilt, silence and the loss of innocence, and a story about the kind of love which may survive it all.

A Welsh community is drawn together and blown apart by a strange vision in the mountains: the huge spectre of a woman floating over a ridge. The people who live here in these mountains already have their own demons – drink, drugs, domestic violence, psychoses – but each character has a different experience of this strange apparition, a different reaction, and for some it will change everything. Is it a collective hallucination? A meteorological phenomenon? Whatever it is, they all saw something, early one morning on the shores of a mountain lake, something that will awaken in them powers and passions and, perhaps, a possibility of healing these broken people in a broken country.

Sarn Helen – Helen’s Causeway – is the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north. As Tom walks the route, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, he describes the changing landscape around him and explores the political, cultural and mythical history of this country that has been so divided, by language and by geography. From one of Wales’ most celebrated younger writers, Sarn Helen is at once a vivid and immersive portrait of a nation, and a resonant meditation upon the way in which we are shaped by place and in turn shape the places – potentially irrevocably.

I like walking. I dream of getting fit enough to walk interesting trails all over the world, but my health is not always with me. Second hand walking is the next best thing, and I had never heard of the Sarn Helen trail. Walking through Wales could very well be a new dream, and even though this project is mostly based around fiction, this book instantly made the list as something I would very much like to read.