The international longlist for the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – has been announced.
A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò (Nigeria) (book and ebook available to reserve)
Ayobami Adebayo, the Women’s Prize shortlisted author of ‘Stay With Me’, unveils a dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession and political corruption.
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (UK/Ghana) (book/ebook/audio available to reserve)
The one thing that can solve Stephen’s problems is dancing. Dancing at church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop, while the DJ spins garage cuts. Dancing with his band, making music which speaks not just to the hardships of their lives, but the joys too. Dancing with his best friend Adeline, two-stepping around the living room, crooning and grooving, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone, at home, to his father’s records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known. Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades? ‘Small Worlds’ is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within.
The Glutton by A. K. Blakemore (England, UK) (book available to reserve)
Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient’s room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it’s not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land.
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan (Hong Kong) (book and ebook available to reserve)
These poems engage fearlessly with intertwined themes of identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy. Questions of acceptance and assimilation are both explored through a family’s evolving dynamics and exposed through close attention to the microaggressions of queerphobia and the anti-Asian racism that accompanied the Covid pandemic. Yet ‘Bright Fear’ remains deeply attuned to moments of beauty, tenderness and grace. It asks how we might find a home within our own bodies, in places both distant and near, and in the ‘constructed space’ of the poem. The contemplative central sequence, Ars Poetica, traces the radically healing and transformative role of poetry during the poet’s teenage and adult years, culminating in a polyphonic reconciliation of tongues.
Penance by Eliza Clark (England, UK) (book and ebook available to reserve)
It’s been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time. That story is ‘Penance’, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec. Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the ‘definitive account’ of the murder – and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.
The Coiled Serpent by Camilla Grudova (Canada) (book and ebook available to reserve)
A little girl throws up Gloria-Jean’s teeth after an explosion at the custard factory; Pax, Alexander, and Angelo are hypnotically enthralled by a book that promises them enlightenment if they keep their semen inside their bodies; Victoria is sent to a cursed hotel for ailing girls when her period mysteriously stops. In a damp, putrid spa, the exploitative drudgery of work sparks revolt; in a Margate museum, the new Director curates a venomous garden for public consumption. In Grudova’s unforgettably surreal style, these stories conjure a singular, startling strangeness that proves the deft skill of a writer at the top of her game.
Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein (Trinidad and Tobago) (book available to reserve)
The music was still playing when Dalton Changoor vanished into thin air. On a hill overlooking Bell Village sits the Changoor farm, where Dalton and Marlee Changoor live in luxury unrecognisable to those who reside in the farm’s shadow. Down below is the barrack, a ramshackle building of wood and tin, divided into rooms occupied by whole families. Among these families are the Saroops – Hans, Shweta, and their son, Krishna, who live hard lives of backbreaking work, grinding poverty and devotion to faith. When Dalton Changoor goes missing and Marlee’s safety is compromised, farmhand Hans is lured by the promise of a handsome stipend to move to the farm as watchman. But as the mystery of Dalton’s disappearance unfolds their lives become hellishly entwined, and the small community altered forever.
Local Fires by Joshua Jones (Wales, UK) (book and ebook available to reserve)
In this series of interconnected tales, fires both literal and metaphorical, local and all-encompassing, blaze together to herald the emergence of a singular new Welsh literary voice.
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (US) (book available to reserve)
When X – an iconoclastic artist, writer and polarizing shape-shifter – dies suddenly, her widow, wild with grief, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognised as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals and destruction. All the while she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.
Close to Home by Michael Magee (Northern Ireland, UK) (book and ebook available to reserve)
Sean’s brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble but you can’t say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different. He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back. Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony’s drinking is worse than ever. Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished, Sean’s degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on and no one will give him the time of day. One night he loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos.
Open Up by Thomas Morris (Wales, UK) (book and ebook available to reserve)
Everything felt familiar and nostalgic. It was the joy and blood-thrill of being understood, of being ready to give himself entirely to another. From a child attending his first football match, buoyed by secret magic, and a wincingly humane portrait of adolescence, to the perplexity of grief and loss through the eyes of a seahorse, Thomas Morris seeks to find grace, hope and benevolence in the churning tumult of self-discovery. Philosophically acute and strikingly original, this outstanding suite of stories is bursting with a bracing emotional depth.
Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest (England, UK) (book available to reserve)
A new poetry collection from Britain’s foremost truth-teller. In ‘Divisible by Itself and One’, Kae Tempest masterfully steers a path between their more public-facing performance and dramatic work and the contemplative voice that came to the fore in ‘Running Upon the Wires’. Questions of integrity – hence the prime number of the title – are addressed in direct, affecting terms: how can we be true to ourselves while under constant pressure to conform? Throughout the poems, ideas of form – of the body, gender, and in nature – resurface and resolve. Stories of transformation hold a central place in Tempest’s work, their best to date; here, the poet considers the changes that are sometimes required to be oneself.
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