Drift: Winner of the Wales Book of the Year

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War casts its pall of shadow and gunsmoke over much of the book, ‘smothering everything,’ rubbing out ‘traditions, kindness, joy’ and making ‘people’s lives invisible. She is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and lives with her family on a farm near Aberystwyth. Lewis mainly uses the military, the story’s antagonist, to explore how roughly refugees such as Hamza are handled and regarded.

On hunger strike, and clinging to past memories of a pre-war life (“every day was a day of resurrection”), it seems Hamza would rather die than stay incarcerated for an indefinite period of time, his days marked by regular mistreatment from sadistic prison guards. Winners also received a Wales Book of the Year trophy, designed by artist and blacksmith Angharad Pearce Jones. So what we have in this tale is a modern myth cast with a timely urgency, and a clever inversion of the sadly familiar story of a refugee wanting to arrive in a new country. Moved and moved so that he had become so far removed from where he had been, who he had been, that he no longer knew himself. Her brother, Joseph is an almost-twin, born virtually in the same breath of their mother Arianell, and he shares some sort of umbilical with her, often knowing what she is doing, or doing wrong, as when she sends a soldier hunting for Hamza walking into the sea and to his death.

For Hamza wants to leave Wales, desperately needs to find his family, especially his son, not knowing whether he is alive or dead. Experienced middle aged man, father to a son, uprooted from Syria and a girl who has never left the hamlet she grew up with or the house she was born in. We’re in lambing season at the moment, and you will see crows circling lambs and taking their eyes and tongues, and that is as much a part of nature as the spring flowers and all the beauty that happens at this time of year.

It contributes to the novel’s overall surrealism and implies ‘she’ is not important enough to be named. There are also shades of Donal Ryan’s From a Low and Quiet Sea and Sarah Hall’s recent novel Burntcoat, which had an immigrant love story at its centre. However, it is more likely that it is the pills and Nefyn’s dual affinity to land and sea that leave people with that impression.I liked the setting and the characters in this book, drawn with a lyrical style which was lovely to read. A truly beautiful and haunting novel, and an incredible feat of storytelling' DONAL RYAN, author of FROM A LOW AND QUIET SEA 'A tender, unusual and gorgeously wrought love story' RACHEL JOYCE, author of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY'In times of war, Lewis finds resilience, redemption and hope. A tender, unusual and gorgeously wrought love story’ RACHEL JOYCE Purchase this product now and earn 37 Points! Lewis is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and lives with her family on a farm near Aberystwyth. The winners of this year’s Wales Arts Review People’s Choice Award and Golwg360’s Barn y Bobl Award were also announced, revealing which books were the favourites among the public.