Books published by Parthian Books

Migrants, immigrants, travellers, and holidaymakers feature in Dylan Thomas Prize-winner Rachel Trezise's second collection of short fiction: in eleven dazzling stories of lives lived on either side of boundaries, and on the fringes of society.

Between Two Rivers is an honest, funny and moving memoir of Baghdad life from the perspective of a young woman from England, transplanted into another culture by love and family. Dorothy is eighteen when she meets a dark, mysterious stranger at a dance in Portsmouth. Zane is a student from Iraq studying engineering. Almost before she realises, they are married, her husband has finished his course and Dorothy has a three month old daughter called Summer. They borrow a Mercedes from Zane's brother in Germany and begin the drive to Baghdad. Zane doesn't have a licence or insurance for the car and Dorothy doesn't have a visa for Iraq. Zane has only just told his family he is married. They arrive in Baghdad to live with his parents, sisters and brothers in a house in the suburbs. Zane has to find a job in a country where everything is changing. Dorothy has to learn Arabic and help entertain a stream of visitors, all eager to meet the imported new bride. She is soon pregnant again. Life in in the east is not going to be as she expected, letters take weeks to arrive from home and her mother is convinced she is never going to see her daughter again... The book follows twenty years of love, adjustment and adventure for Dorothy Al Khafaji.

As the newly-built foundries of South Wales enter their first decline, a travelling harpist from the rural north arrives in town to find his friends caught in a fiercly-fought industrial dispute, a dispute which quickly spirals out of control.

Dannie Abse's rich mixture of Welsh and Jewish backgrounds, and his dual occupations of doctor and author, have led to what is widely regarded as one of the most readable, humorous and poignant autobiographies since the war.

A classic selection of the best of Stan Barstow's stories covering the last five decades of British life. A group of young tearaways on a night out that begins with horse-play and ends in tragedy; the loneliness of a drunken miner's wife; a war-shocked ex-sailor forced beyond endurance, a widower is brought to grief by a woman outside his real understanding, a factory worker finding his way through the physical world of his marriage real and involving, Barstow's stories are urgent slices of life, men and women struggling and succeeding to come to terms with The Likes of Us.

A new edition of House of America, playwright Ed Thomas's obliquely structured account of a dysfunctional Welsh Valleys family living on the edge of an open-cast mine whose loss of self-worth and sanity is fatally accelerated by the imported dreams they fill their lives and bury their past with.

Winner of the Best First Book Award at Zimbabwe International Book Fair 2010. Ellie is a shy girl growing up in post-Independence Zimbabwe, longing for escape from the confines of small-town life. When she eventually moves to Britain, her wish seems to have come true. But life there is not all she imagined.

In the first and, arguably, the finest of Hilda Vaughan's ten novels, the dawn of the twentieth century brings a new generation that clashes with the conservative traditionalism of an old Welsh way of life.Rhys Lloyd and his engagement with the ideas of Social Darwinism and the League of Nations make him a dangerous figure in the village. The son of a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist, his love for the church-going Esther reflects tensions that have long and bitterly divided the community. Most striking, however, is the stoic and determined Esther who calmly suffers the casual brutality of her agricultural upbringing, drawing on an inner strength and organic spirituality that would provide an archetype for Vaughan's later heroines. Despite a loving and sensitive depiction of her native Radnorshire landscape, Vaughan offers no rural idyll.The Battle to the Weak is a vividly drawn, socially engaged portrait of a small rural Welsh community with an awareness of its context within the wider world.

At the age of fifty, towards the end of the First World War, W. H. Davies decided that he must marry. Spurning London society and the literary circles where he had been lionised since the publication of his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, he set about looking for the right partner on the streets of London.Young Emma is a moving and revealing memoir told with disarming honesty and humour. Davies records his life with three women: from his affair with Bella, the wife of a Sergeant Major, to his year-long liaison with the gentle Louise, to the turbulent brushes with a society woman who fears for her own life at his hands. He finally meets Emma, then pregnant, at a bus-stop on the Edgware Road. This is the story of their love affair.

All The Places We Lived is a collection of disparate, yet inextricably connected stories that are bound by the common threads that exist amongst young people in and out of love with each other and life in the twenty-first century.

Shortlisted for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize.Lola and Pijin make up stories to test each other, stories of daring and adventure, of bad people and of Gwyn who drives his ice-cream up the hill to their town every week. Gwyn is a dangerous man and Pijin knows it. Lola is not so sure. As they grow up and their friendship grows more complicated, some of their stories fall silent, but some will come true.Pigeon is a journey through the uneasy half-forgotten memories of childhood, a story about wishful-thinking and the power of language.

One of Merthyr's Victorian brickyard girls, Saran watches the world parade past her doorstep on the banks of the stinking and rat-infested Morlais Brook: the fair-day revellers; the chapel-goers and the funeral processions. She never misses a trip to the town's wooden theatres, despite her life ruled by the 5 a.m. hooter, pit strikes, politics and the First World War that takes away so many of her children. Her Glyn will work a treble shift for beer money; her brother Harry is the district's most notorious drinker and fighter until he is 'saved'. The town changes and grows but Saran is still there for Glyn, for Harry, for her children and grandchildren.In his 1935 novel Black Parade, writer, soldier and political activist Jack Jones creates a superbly riotous, clear and unsentimental picture of Merthyr life as his home town reels headlong into the twentieth century.

An artist at heart, Trystan Morgan grows up in his grandmother's valley mining cottage, duty-bound by her deep wish for him to be a preacher. He comes from farming stock and longs to paint the Welsh countryside of his people. But he agrees to study at the city university although his adolescent mind revolts at the social posturing around him. Trystan's journey through the conflicting cultural, social and political values of his country in the mid-twentieth century is bewildering but finally liberating. And through the glittering, crowded, kaleidoscopic images of this bravura novel, the author creates a rich impression of people and place; a Wales which is a landscape of the mind.

Despite talk of bulls, bears and stock-market crashes, the depression meant little to young brothers Alun and Arthur as they carved their initials into the sycamore tree below Hope Mountain. They longed to see the great ships that would bring their father home. Eagerly they follow the progress of their father, famous Welsh tenor Jabez Trevor.

The Hill of Dreams is the story of a young man's quest for beauty through literature, love and, finally, the spiritual alchemy of drugs and dreams. It is widely regarded as Arthur Machen's finest work.

Presents the story of an Anglo Indian community in 1960s Calcutta who are coming to terms with India taking its first few faltering steps towards democracy. This book includes a list of recipes and a glossary of Anglo Indian words. It is suitable for those interested in stories of South Asia, and the cross-over of English and Indian.

John Tripp (1927-1986) was one of the leading literary figures in Wales. Poet, short story writer, and journalist, he was an outspoken and often controversial writer whose passion and vigour often spilled over. This book features a collection of his writings.

In 1976, Niall's family emigrated to Australia, as part of the GBP10 Pom scheme. He lived there for 3 years, moving from Brisbane to Perth in a souped-up station wagon. 30 years later, he returned to retrace his steps; this is a memoir, travelogue, rant, paean, elegy, and perhaps the closest thing to an autoibiography that Niall will ever write.

Tai and the Troll are mates. Tai lives in Tremorfa and the Troll lives at the bottom of Mrs Griffiths' garden. The Troll likes fishing, apples and his old car which only starts when Tai kicks the tyres. The Troll has to visit his Aunt Senni who lives under a bridge in Brecon and he's asked Tai to come with him on a day trip.

Presents the story of Michael Caradock, a writer whose life has ended violently on an isolated Welsh island. This book follows his protected Welsh childhood, his crucial first encounters with sex, his literary success in London and his final withdrawal to Wales.

Presents a compilation of short stories from fourteen of best Basque writers. This title provides an insight into modern Basque society and literature.

Through his letters home and six short stories, Alun Lewis paints a vibrant picture of life in India as a British serviceman during World War II. Intimate, vivid, observational, and always filled with emotion, this is a rare literary example of one Welshman's experience of empire and war.

Set in a rural mining village in South Wales in the years leading up to the Second World War, this book recreates a magical but alive world that will resonate with our memories, real and imagined, of childhood.