Product Description

Set in a Welsh slate-quarrying village during WW1, against a background of appalling deprivation, Caradog Prichard's autobiographical masterpiece centres on a young boy and his relationship with his widowed and isolated mother. As the boy's fragile world disintegrates, his natural exuberance gives way to feelings of loss and dispossession, with devastating results. With its dark undercurrent of madness, sexual perversion and violence, alternating with deep humour, and continual undermining of our sense of time, ONE MOONLIT NIGHT can be read on several levels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #488813 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-07
• Original language: Welsh
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Caradog Prichard (1904-1980) was born in north-west Wales and pursued a career in journalism, finally becoming sub-editor at the Daily Telegraph. He won the Crown of the National Eisteddfod of Wales a record three times in sucession and was awarded the 1962 Eisteddfod Chair. Menna Baines was awarded an MPhil in 1992 for a study on Caradog Prichard which is shortly to be published by Gomer Press.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant but disturbing,,,
This book centres on what would be called a dysfunctional village nowadays, and the experiences of a dysfunctional boy within this village. The extreme poverty and deprivation in which the characters live takes its toll on all of the inhabitants mentally, and the abuse this generates turns this North Wales village into perhaps the saddest you will ever encounter in literature. Poverty, perversion, Child abuse, Transvestism, Madness, Death, Murder, all are seen through the eyes of the main character, never named, who cannot grow up mentally and brings himself to distruction. The treatment of the difficult subject matter is not lurid, but sensitive and deeply sad, just like the main character, who never really understands what is happening to him or his village. The treatment of religion in this book is intensely cynical, as the reader watches the emptiness of Christianity in these lives through the eyes of the uncomprehending child. Human nature is at its worst in this book, but the writing at its best from one of Wales' most disturbing and challenging writers.