The Wales Book of the Year

Tuesday 12 June 2007
The Wales Book of the Year
Un Bywyd o Blith Nifer (One Life Amongst Many), the biography of the politician and playwright Saunders Lewis by Dr Robin Chapman from the Department of Welsh, is one of three books to be short listed for The Wales Book of the Year.

The award is organised by The Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society for Authors, and is given to the best book written in English and the best book in Welsh in the fields of creative writing and literary criticism. The winners, who will each receive £10,000, will be announced at an awards ceremony in the Cardiff Hilton on 9 July.

The short list for both competitions was announced at the Hay literary festival at the end of May:

Welsh Language:
T Robin Chapman, Un Bywyd o Blith Nifer (Gwasg Gomer)
Gwen Pritchard Jones, Dygwyl Eneidiau (Gwasg Gwynedd)
Llwyd Owen, Ffydd Gobaith Cariad (Y Lolfa)

English Language
Christine Evans, Growth Rings (Seren, 2006)
Lloyd Jones, Mr Cassini (Seren, 2006)
Jim Perrin, The Climbing Essays (The In Pinn, 2006)

Robin Chapman is originally from Leicester and now living in Aberystwyth. His biography of the novelist Islwyn Ffowc Elis, Rhywfaint o Anfarwoldeb(A Measure of Immortality) was shortlisted for the award in 2004.

A Summary of the Book
'I have never thought, and I still do not think that there are materials for a complete composition in my flitting life.' Twenty five years after Saunders Lewis made this characteristically sweeping statement in 1980, those words have been brilliantly and distinctly refuted.

Saunders Lewis was one of the most enigmatic and controversial Welshman of the twentieth century, a bundle of contradictions: the brave soldier who led a party of pacifists; the gentleman without roots who inspired the patriotic werin; the fiery papist amongst the increasingly lukewarm Nonconformists; the literary man and dramatist who admitted that he had no dialect and did not believe there was an audience for his plays.  Yet, this stranger became a Welsh icon, and his name synonymous with contention and extremism, sacrifice and heroism.
 
When Lewis died in 1985 Rheinallt Llwyd wrote in Llais Llyfrau: ’The sooner we have a full and balanced study of his work the better. That alone would be a suitable tribute to him.’  That tribute is now paid in this masterful memoir by Wales’ foremost biographer, T. Robin Chapman.
 
Un Bywyd o Blith Nifer by T. Robin Chapman (Gwasg Gomer, 2006) £19.99 [ISBN: 1843237091]

The Welsh language panel is made up of John Rowlands, novelist and critic; Gwion Hallam, poet, playwright, and author, and Elinor Jones, broadcaster and presenter.  The three English language judges are the poet and critic, Patrick McGuinness; editor, academic and critic, Katie Gramich, and journalist and broadcaster, Carolyn Hitt.