Under The Dust

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UNDER THE DUST - Jordi Coca

ISBN: 9781905762392

£9.99

Exploring a boy's childhood in Barcelona during the Franco dictatorship, Under The Dust is based on the autobiographical experience of Catalan author Jordi Coca. The affecting closeness of the boy's first-person narrative and its pitiless realism set this book apart. The boy's bewildered responses to his father's violence and authoritarianism are played out at home and in a neighbourhood dominated by street gangs, where politics is never more than a block away.

This novel was awarded the Sant Jordi Prize in 2000.

Jordi Coca, one of Catalonia's leading fictional voices, is visiting Wales as a guest of the Academi at this year's Bay Lit Festival. Under the Dust, an account of a 1950's childhood in Barcelona which won the Sant Jordi prize and has become of the most read novels in recent Catalan literature, was published in English this April by Parthian. It is the first in a series of international projects which being developed under the Parthian Carnival Programme over the next three years. It will include writing from Basque, Catalan, Norwegian, Welsh and German appearing in English and several artistic exchange projects.

Jordi Coca was born in Barcelona in 1947. He was first drawn to writing at the age of fourteen, an experience he described, not without irony, as an "enlightenment". He has become a leading figure in Catalan culture and literature, working in the fields of drama, being director of the Barcelona Theatre Institute from 1988 to 1992, and is a theatre director and playwright

LUGGAGE FROM ELSEWHERE - A G Thomas

ISBN: 9781902638942

£9.99

“We lived on the coast but only ever knew how to east fish fingers. We could warm up a few songs in Welsh but couldn’t order a cup of tea in the language. We were famed for our close community links but were to lock ourselves away indoors with the telly. Others had telephones, we shouted.”

Luggage From Elsewhere follows a groups of friends as they grow up and experiment with sex, drugs and political action in a society coming to terms with a loss of work and power. Against this background Thomas’ fictional family is drawn with warmth, insight and a biting humour. A striking and unusual debut novel.

Aneurin Gareth Thomas is a Welshman who has spent the last fifteen years in Spain working as a teacher, writer and translator. His first book Luggage from Elsewhere has been described as the great post-colonial novel about Wales in the dying years of the twentieth century, his newest translation Paper Spurs by Olga Merino is the account of a young woman's journey from rural Spain to the sweat shops of Barcelona.

A dazzling and devastating account of a bitter-bitter sweet Old South Walian childhood and adolescence. Rachel Trezise

An extraordinary debut novel. -The Big Issue