Drift: Winner of the Wales Book of the Year

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Lewis mainly uses the military, the story’s antagonist, to explore how roughly refugees such as Hamza are handled and regarded. So yes, it was based on somewhere I know very well, that has lots of stories and language and folklore attached to it. The novel opens in a wind-torn cove, a place where the reclusive Nefyn loiters to collect “shells and whelks, egg cases and seeds”. Not far away Nefyn tries to heal Hamza’s battered body, cutting his hair (in an incredibly tender ritual) whilst slowly nursing him back to health and sharing with him her trove of beachcombed treasures – ‘the shells, herring-gull skulls, brittle stars and egg cases split and gaping.

I think so, and unfortunately it seems even more relevant than when I wrote it, with what’s happening in Ukraine. As he recuperates at the cottage, they open up about their pasts, and we learn that Hamza’s wife was killed by a stray bullet and his son is missing. This is Caryl Lewis’ first novel in English, presumably her second language after Welsh, but there is nom accidental clunkiness in her prose. I read the book in one sitting and found the descriptions of the sea and the book's setting stunning. He refuses to accept any responsibility for what he does in the novel to Hamza and the consequences of his actions: ‘“It’s got nothing to do with me.It centres around a small welsh village by the sea, and the life of twins, one boy, one girl, who live there. Drift is a hypnotic tale of lost identity, the quest for home and the wondrous resilience of the human spirit. Though their worlds are depicted without overt judgement or moral imposition, the pace of the novel means there is little time for enquiry into some fleeting moments of context (say, why a council estate upbringing has fed into calculating behaviour).

Hamza himself has spent nine years as a prisoner in different camps, with no hope of an ending: “[He] had been moved. In a rural town on the Welsh west coast, a tempest brings a Welshwoman and a Syrian mapmaker together. I wish someone had explained that this meant it had a strong fantasy plotline that was not hinted at in the blurb. Print edition of BTO British Trust for Ornithology News landed today - winter edition containing a marvellous review by Lesley Hindley of our book by Jasmine Donahaye: Birdsplaining: A Natural History. And I think the book encourages us to look at the specific and the microcosm, rather than pulling back and making sweeping statements, which is what our politics is about at the moment.The Wales Book of the Year Award is an annual prize hosted by Literature Wales to celebrate literary talent from Wales across many genres and in both English and Welsh. Lewis takes pains to express the individualism of both Nefyn and Hamza, to show that their union is a harmonising, as opposed to disregarding, of their cultural differences. The novel is a lot about secrets: Nefyn and her connection to the sea, her and Joseph's family history (what happened to their mother? Original and timely… show[s] the resilience of the human spirit, the tenacity and love that helps us survive. Another issue was that I never fully connected with Nefyn and Hamza as characters, and the book felt too short to properly develop a convincing romance.

Drift is an original and timely story about the impact of war set against an unusual backdrop of an isolated coastal town in Wales. You can't help but fall in love with her as you watch as her world changes when she rescues a stranger on the beach. There are also shades of Donal Ryan’s From a Low and Quiet Sea and Sarah Hall’s recent novel Burntcoat, which had an immigrant love story at its centre. Billed as a revelatory bike ride through Europe and the Middle East, Lowe’s adventure from London to Tehran is not a typical tale of endurance.The story centres around brother and sister Joseph and Nefyn, who live together in their family cottage on a cliff edge overlooking the ocean – it is just the two of them, since their parents are both dead. It is unclear to what extent Nefyn may be mentally disabled or whether it is the effect of the pills Joseph gives her which make the locals think she is not ‘all there’. The ‘Muslim Council of Britain analysed 11,000 UK […] articles’ and found The Mail on Sunday had the ‘most negative coverage, with 78% of its Muslim-based stories containing negative themes, compared to the industry average, itself of 59%. Literature Wales’ executive director Claire Furlong said: “Huge congratulations to Caryl, Llŷr and to all the Wales Book of the Year 2023 winners. She is a young woman who has inexplicable powers, such as being able to generate a storm at will, or dive to any depth of sea-water, as she does when rescuing .

I just thought it sounds so beautiful, and it connects the Welsh part of the book with something deeper as well. There’s an affinity with small countries with multiple languages, when you think of Catalan or other languages that are living side-by-side with dominant languages.

I am a big lover of fantasy novels, but that was not what I was anticipating with this book, and I think I switched off a bit once this part of the story emerged. Caryl: My mother was a singer, so when I was younger I spent a lot of time with my grandmothers who lived near Llangrannog, which is a beautiful, beautiful stretch of coastline in West Wales, and along the coast from Llangrannog at Aberporth is an Army base which tests munitions for use in conflict abroad. It was bitterly realistic and walked the broken-glass edge of how cruel humans can be, but it wasn’t dark; instead it was almost child-like in its luminous beauty, its kindness, and the kind of magic that so much fantasy will never quite capture. Booker-winning author Saunders has been teaching the 19th-century Russian short story at Syracuse University for more than 20 years now and this book makes the class sound incredible. In 2017, The Independent reported on a survey that found ‘ 73% of those of who are worried about immigration voted [to] leave [the European Union]’.