Drift

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Mae nofel gyntaf yr awdures Caryl Lewis yn yr iaith Saesneg yn llawn awyrgylch cyfrin. Dyma stori gariad am ferch ifanc o Gymraes a mapiwr o Syria. Mae'r testun yn gyfoethog o ran hud, dirgelwch a swyn y môr.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

The hauntingly atmospheric English-language début from the acclaimed Welsh author: a love story between a young Welsh woman and a Syrian mapmaker, rich with magic, mystery and the wonder of the sea.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

In-stock items will be dispatched within 3 business days, usually by Royal Mail Tracked 48. For pre-orders, we’ll dispatch within 3 business days of receiving the item from our supplier.

Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Caryl Lewis is a multi-award-winning Welsh novelist, children's writer, playwright and screenwriter. Her breakthrough novel Martha, Jac a Sianco (2004) is widely regarded as a modern classic of Welsh literature, and is on the Welsh curriculum, and the film adaptation - with a screenplay by Lewis herself - went on to win six Welsh BAFTAS and the Spirit of the Festival Award at the 2010 Celtic Media Festival. Lewis's other screenwriting work includes BBC/S4C thrillers Hinterland and Hidden. Lewis is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and lives with her family on a farm near Aberystwyth. Drift is her début novel in the English language.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

Drift – Caryl Lewis’s first novel written in English – is a story submerged in mystery, alluding to a world beyond what is deemed rational, with the sea at the heart of it all. Love and longing collide with these motifs to challenge how one deals with the heaviness of letting go, as Lewis questions if this is ever really the case. The story centres around brother and sister Joseph and Nefyn, who live together in their family cottage on a cliff edge overlooking the ocean – it is just the two of them, since their parents are both dead. Of the duo, Nefyn appears to be highlighted as the protagonist. She is an initial enigma, suppressed in some strange way, until a sort of catharsis occurs after she finds a gravely injured man washed up on the shore, seemingly out of the blue. It is then that Nefyn’s true nature begins to flourish, as readers learn of her attachment to the sea and how deep it really goes. The rescued castaway who bears witness to this turns out to be a Syrian mapmaker who has suffered immense loss at the hands of the Syrian civil war, and who finds solace in the connection that he and Nefyn share. Lewis offers an alternative portrayal of love, yet just as tender, in the characters of Efa and Emrys (with Emrys’s name meaning immortal in Welsh), so the subplot weaves beautifully into the main themes of the narrative. Arguably, aside from Nefyn, it is the sea that is positioned as the main character in the novel, both in Lewis’s lingering descriptions of it and the role it plays in the story itself. The influence and jurisdiction of the ocean are emphasised by the irony created when the sea’s suggested sentient nature is set against the proud and pretentious army base, which tries to assert an authority of control over everything. So, when it comes to the sea, regarding even part of it as ‘military waters’ comes across as a gorgeously sardonic moment from the author when one considers the powerful and overarching presence of the ocean throughout Drift . The significance of this becomes even more profound when contemplating the environmental crisis the world is experiencing currently. How the author writes about the sea, and thus the earthly landscape altogether, reminds readers not just of nature’s allure but of its immense importance to us as humans – like Nefyn, we cannot function without it. However, this is a notion that is drifting from us, with nature more and more being regarded as dispensable in our digitised lives. In response, Lewis brings the focus back to the environment, giving power to it, and in turn marginalises our automated existence. Overall, it is the setting of the story that takes centre stage in Drift rather than the characters, who seem to happily embrace the influence the sea has over them and their present and past relationships, albeit some more than others. It is the magic and mystery that Lewis intertwines with this element that make her novel an assured page-turner, leaving readers with such a strong yet simple message – nature innately aligns itself with us, and we should let it.