Autumn Bookcase 2019 announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Autumn Bookcase 2019 announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair

16 October 2019

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Wales Literature Exchange will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest international book trade event, held between 16 - 20 October 2019. Norway will be the Guest of Honour this year.

While at the fair, Wales Literature Exchange will be meeting publishers, agents and translators, and presenting this year’s Bookcase - our selection of books which we recommend for translation. This year, eleven titles have been selected: each one another world, from Wales.

Mihangel Morgan’s Hen Ieithoedd Diflanedig (Languages of the Lost) is a series of poems written from the point of view of the speakers of twenty lost or disappearing languages, each a portrayal filled with quirky humour and empathy from an exceptional writer.

Erato by Deryn Rees Jones is an offering of experimental poems that question poetic forms themselves to open a flexible dialogue about death and even with the dead. Niall Griffiths’ eighth novel, Broken Ghost, is centred around a strange vision three characters witness after a rave, which changes their lives and society at large.

Many of this year’s titles travel back in time, such as Babel, by Ifan Morgan Jones, the first steampunk novel to appear in the Welsh language, in which Sara leaves her bucolic existence to pursue a career in journalism in the bustling industrial town. Damian Walford Davies’ most recent collection of poetry is also set at the time of the emerging industrialization of Cardiff in the 1890s, as Docklands tells the story of an architect who gets lost in the city’s underworld.

Cerdded mewn Cell by Robin Llywelyn is a collection of surreal short stories, each populated by memorably bizarre characters, and is a breathtaking achievement by Wales’ most inventive fiction writer.

Throw Me to the Wolves playfully twists elements of the police procedural with Patrick McGuinness’ reflective style in order to frame an exploration of the past: of memory, childhood abuse, and trauma. The Prose Medal winner at this year’s National Eisteddfod was Ingrid, a sensitive and unforgettable portrayal of living with Dementia, and an astonishing debut novel by Rhiannon Ifans.

We travel to many countries through this year’s Bookcase, and in Alys Conran’s second novel, Dignity, we travel back and forth from Britain and India, as she details the lives of three remarkable women at significant junctures in their lives. The poet Richard Gwyn’s fourth collection Stowaway is filled with journeys and the figure of the stowaway traveller, who transcends geographical, historical and even imagined borders.

With a narrative reminiscent of Borges, The Blue Tent by Richard Gwyn also plays with the concepts of time and reality, as a man explores the blue tent that has appeared in the field next to his house.

All eleven books will be actively promoted by Wales Literature Exchange at international book fairs, literary festivals, translation workshops and other events throughout the coming year.
To read more about these titles and for translation rights details, visit our Bookcase section.

To organize a meeting with Wales Literature Exchange during any future bookfairs, please contact us at post@waleslitexchange.org.