Tonnau Tryweryn

Author: Martin Davis

ISBN: 9781847710765

Publication Date: 16 October 2008

Publisher: Y Lolfa, Tal-y-bont

Format: Paperback, 195x130 mm, 272 pages

Language: Welsh

♥ Welsh-language Book of the Month: November 2008

The background to this novel is the drowning of Cwm Tryweryn. We follow the lives of Mefina, Emlyn and the Irishman Des O'Farrell between the 1950s and 2007, and the way in which they interact with each other. Their personal affairs and the historical background reached a climax at the time when Tryweryn was drowned, and subsequently affected their whole lives.

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Further Information:

Tonnau Tryweryn

The drowning of the Tryweryn valley in the early 1960s, to create a reservoir for the city of Liverpool, displaced an entire community and became a turning-point in the development of Welsh nationalism.

As work on the project begins near her home, Mefina prepares to leave school to train as a nurse in Liverpool, deepening existing tensions between her and her boyfriend, Emlyn, with his inflexible political and personal principles.

Whilst Mefina blossoms in Liverpool, Emlyn becomes increasingly troubled. But Mefina’s own perspective changes in the face of negative attitudes to her own Welsh identity, especially through her English lover and his family.

Eventually she returns home, marrying an Irishman, Des, whose republican connections begin to reveal the contrasts as much as affinities between Irish and Welsh nationalist movements.

Despite herself, Mefina finds the ongoing Tryweryn saga and the evolution of her own relationships affecting her ever more deeply.

Meanwhile Emlyn’s encounter with an older woman who has chosen to return to her native Wales, forces him too to review his own assumptions.

Weaving together fiction and historical fact, this absorbing novel explores the conflicting responses by a disempowered rural community to the imposition from outside the country of a major infrastructure project.

Through his central characters, Martin Davis traces the lasting effects of such a traumatic event on personal lives as well as its social and political impacts, both locally and in the wider community, at the time and down to the present day.

Cyfnewidfa Lên Cymru/Wales Literature Exchange

Prizes:

Dewiswyd gan Gyfnewidfa Lên Cymru ar gyfer ei Silff Lyfrau 2008-09.

Chosen by Wales Literature Exchange for its 2008-09 Bookcase.