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Parthian Books

The Blue Tent

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Wales Book of the Year-winning Author

Author of bestseller The Colour of a Dog Running Away

'A mysterious, dream-like story, delicately-written and with a disturbing undertow, The Blue Tent is in the best tradition of modern oneiric fiction' –  Patrick McGuinness


In a lonely house deep in the Black Mountains of south Wales, a man spends insomniac nights absorbed in the ancient texts left him by his mysterious aunt. When a blue tent appears in the field at the end of his garden, his solitary life is turned inside out.

But who owns the tent?

And when the tent’s occupants emerge, whose story are they telling? As his life unravels, the man begins to question whether he is the orchestrator or the victim of his own experiences. Are the stories that guide or steer his life – any life – real, or merely the echo of other, possible lives?

The Blue Tent continues to ... ensnare long after it is set down, its haze of
possibilities proving for compulsive re-reading.’ Harper Lauren, Wales Arts Review

'One of the most satisfying, engrossing, and perfectly realised novels of the year.' The Western Mail

'The book is itself a sort of portal, where the novelist-as -alchemist builds us a house in the hills and then fills it ... with a convincing magic.' Nation.Cymru

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

author photoRichard Gwyn was born in Pontypool on 22 July, 1956 and grew up in Crickhowell, Brecon-shire. After several years of self-abuse and heartache, he left London and spent the 1980s travelling, much of it recorded in his memoir, The Vagabond’s Breakfast, which won a Wales Book of the Year award in 2012. In 2005 he achieved bestseller status with his first novel, The Colour of a Dog Running Away (Parthian, 2005), which has since been translated into eight languages. Richard has since written two other novels, including The Blue Tent, and is the author of four collections of poetry, the most recent of them being Stowaway: A Levantine Adventure (2018). His work as a translator from Spanish includes The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America (2016).