Dai Country

Alun Richards casts his baleful eye on the central valleys of twentieth-century South Wales from the 1930s to the 1970s, the personal relationships and social ambitions of the inhabitants of this much-fabled country. Includes the best of his short stories, as funny and savage as they are scathing and compassionate, combined with his entrancing autobiographical memoir Days of Absence.

Alun Morgan Richards was born in Pontypridd in 1929. He wrote six novels from 1962 to 1979 and two scintillating collections of short stories, Dai Country (1973) and The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil (1976). Plays for stage and radio were complemented by original screenplays and adaptations for television, including BBC's Onedin Line. As an editor, he produced best-selling editions of Welsh short stories and tales of the sea for Penguin. His sensitive biography of his close friend, Carwyn James, appeared in 1984 and his own entrancing memoir Days of Absence in 1986.