Library of Wales: Dai Country

At the heart of Dai Country - the central valleys of twentieth-century South Wales from the 1930s to the 1970s - was the metropolis of Pontypridd, and it is from this vantage point in time and space that Alun Richards cast his baleful eye on the personal relationships and social ambitions of the inhabitants of this much-fabled country.In this compendium volume, the best of his short stories, as funny and savage as they are scathing and compassionate, are combined with his entrancing autobiographical memoir Days of Absence to take us to the core of those incomparable valleys, with their lived experience stripped bare for once of their usual cloak of cliché and sentiment."The fiction establishes him as the supreme chronicler of (post-war) South Wales valley life ... and his fascinating account of his upbringing in English-speaking Pontypridd ... raises questions about the complex plurality of modern Wales which still command serious attention".The New Companion to the Literature of Wales (1998)*********************************In Dai Country, we have combined the first part of Richards' autobiography Days of Absence with a selection of what we think is his best short fiction. Alun’s superb talents as a story teller are emphasised in such stories as 'The Scandalous Thoughts of Elmyra Mouth' and 'The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil'.'As a boy I was a creature of disguises, a spy in another man’s land. There were facts about myself which I could not bear to face and in order to avoid doing so I began, at an early age, to spend a good deal of my day in reverie, slipping off into daydreams which provided another world where I would not be found out.' Alun Richards, Days of Absence in Dai Country