Wales Arts Review is excited and proud to announce that 2014 marks the year in which we launch the search for the Greatest Welsh Novel. Over the course of 2014 Wales Arts Review will publish a series of essays by some of Wales’ top literary voices nominating a longlist of twenty five novels marking the finest long works of fictional prose our nation has ever produced. Each issue we will announce the latest title to be added to the longlist, along with the nominating essay. When all the nominating essays have been published we will open a public vote focussing on that longlist to find the Greatest Welsh Novel. The winner will be announced at the Wales Arts Review Roundtable event toward the end of the year, where an award will be handed out to either the author, estate or publisher of the winning work. The longlist has been compiled by a team of Wales Arts Review’s writers and editors, as well as some guest voices. It is a diverse collection of old and new, and there are a fair few surprises in there.
To keep up to date with all developments you can join our Greatest Welsh Novel Facebook page, where many debates will be had over the next twelve months about nominations – those included and those missing out – and you can also follow us on twitter for more immediate updates and interaction with our writers and editors, who will hold regular twitter Q&A’s about the titles nominated.
To start off we are announcing the first TWO titles nominated on the list for Wales’ Greatest Novel: Gary Raymond argues the case for Emyr Humphreys’ 1958 story of three boys growing up in a small town in Flintshire between the wars, A Toy Epic; and Elin Williams nominates Joe Dunthorne’s début novel, a masterpiece of character, Submarine.
Banner illustration by Dean Lewis
