Penguin Modern Classics: One Moonlit Night & Un Nos Ola Leuad

Set in a Welsh slate-quarrying village during the First World War against a background of appalling deprivation, Caradog Prichard's autobiographical masterpiece centres around a young boy and his relationship with his widowed and grief-stricken mother. As the boy's fragile world disintegrates, his natural exuberance gives way to feelings of loss and dispossession. With its dark undercurrent of madness, sexual perversion and violence, alternating with deep humour, and continual undermining of our sense of time, Un Nos Ola Leuad/One Moonlit Night is a novel that can be read on several levels. As Menna Baines writes in her introduction it is 'a deeply personal novel primarily concerned with exploring emotions... impressionistic and symbolic in nature'. This Penguin edition is the first to present both the Welsh text and the English translation side by side. Philip Mitchell's fine new translation gives English readers an opportunity to share to the full the qualities of this Welsh masterpiece.