Winner of the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize 2026. 'A magical and emotional novel that has left us marvelling at the storytelling talent on display.' — the adjudicators

Off the coast of Pembrokeshire lies a hidden island: a paradise where heroes go to forget every wound, every battle and every loss. Morfudd guards it. Llŷr and his family fish the waters around it. Then seven soldiers, the last survivors of a war in Ireland, arrive at the Moelros tavern looking for the way across — carrying with them the head of their dead king.

Ynys Gwales retells the Second Branch of the Mabinogi from the shore, through the people who live beside the legend rather than inside it. In the medieval tale, Bendigeidfran's companions spend eighty years on Gwales feasting and forgetting, until a door is opened and every grief returns. Rebecca Thomas asks what that forgetting costs those who call the island home.

A historian of medieval Wales writing fantasy that keeps one foot on the ground: the Mabinogi told from the shore, by someone who knows what the shore was like.