A camp, playful novel that explores friendship, loss, and lust through the figure of a medieval Welsh poet in 21st century Wales.

Dafydd is a poet. He parties, writes poems, womanizes, and wants to experience life to its full. He lives above a kebab shop with his best friend, Gwilym, and writes poetry to woo his many paramours (married or otherwise).

In Fel yr Haul [Like the sun] Brennig Davies draws the cast of colourful characters from the life and poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym (c. 1320- c. 1380), the medieval troubadour that revolutionized Welsh poetry with his funny, flirty, filthy poems, and places them in 21st century South Wales, on the cusp of the covid pandemic. Dafydd ap Gwilym becomes Dafydd Williams, a seagull from his poems becomes his friend Gwylan, golden-haired Morfudd, the object of many odes becomes a successful lawyer with artistic ambitions; the poet Gwerful Mechain (fl.1460-1502) becomes a punk rock star.

While the novel opens on a comic, farcical note, reaching unexpected emotional depths in the second half. A playful and emotional debut, the book explores themes of feminism, masculinity, sexuality, loss and friendship in a book that will strike a chord with readers everywhere who experienced the pandemic in their early adulthood