A compelling combination of fact and fiction in this compendium volume of the best of Alun Richards’ short stories with a selection from his autobiographical memoir.

With a Foreword by award-winning Welsh author Des Barry.

At the heart of Dai Country – the central valleys of twentieth-century South Wales from the 1930s to the 1970s – was the metropolis of Pontypridd, and it is from this vantage point that Alun Richards cast his baleful eye on the personal relationships and social ambitions of the inhabitants of this much-fabled country.

In this compendium volume, the best of his short stories, as funny and savage as they are scathing and compassionate, are combined with his entrancing autobiographical memoir Days of Absence to take us to the core of those incomparable valleys, stripped bare for once of their usual cloak of cliché and sentiment.

“The fiction establishes him as the supreme chronicler of (post-war) South Wales valley life... and his fascinating account of his upbringing in English-speaking Pontypridd... raises questions about the complex plurality of modern Wales which still command serious attention.”
The New Companion to the Literature of Wales (1998)

Alun Richards was born in Pontypridd in 1929. From the 1960s he was, and successfully so, a full-time writer and published novels and collections of short stories as well as plays for stage and radio, original screenplays and adaptations for television, including BBC’s Onedin Line. He died in 2004.