Hoping to give him a better start in life, Peredur's mother takes him from the estates. But when local kids cycle into his life he heads off after them, accompained by the notion of finding Arthur - an absent, imaginary guardian.. And that's when the trouble really starts. The original Peredur fights for recognition in Arthur's court. Cynan Jones turns this into a modern Quixotian romp.

Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man is struck by lightning. When he wakes, injured and adrift on a kayak, his memory of who he is and how he came to be there is all but shattered. Now he must pit himself against the pain and rely on his instincts to get back to shore, and to the woman he dimly senses waiting for his return. With its taut narrative and its wincingly visceral portrait of a man locked in an uneven struggle with the forces of nature, this is a powerful new work from one of the most distinctive voices in British fiction.

Praise for Cynan Jones: "[A] piercing novella. Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Jones's perfectly pitched novel will appeal to anyone looking beyond sheer thrills." — Library Journal "This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden." — Elliot Bay Book Company “Jones is a Welsh writer who has been compared to Cormac McCarthy, but his sparse style also recalls Ernest Hemingway.”—Kirkus, "Foreign Influence" "There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale...

Waking up early to check the cattle, Gareth notices one of the calving cows is missing and sets off to find her before the sun gets too strong. What follows is a search through memory and anxiety about losing what he has as Gareth walks the land looking for the missing cow. Increasingly, the narrative is disturbed by arresting and often brutal imagery as things chip away at Gareth's patience and the need to find the cow becomes more pressing. The day unfolds, and the cow's behaviour emerges as a metaphor for the relationship between Gareth and his wife Kate as they stumble on desperately in their changing care for each other. Only the reader is aware of the tragedy that awaits the family a...

This is a searing short novel, built of the interlocking fates of a badger-baiter and a disconsolate farmer, unfolding in a stark rural setting where man, animal, land and weather are at loggerheads. Their two paths converge with tragic inevitability. Jones writes of the physiology of grief and the isolation of loss with brilliance, and about the simple rawness of animal existence with a naturalist's unblinking eye. His is a pared-down prose of resonant simplicity and occasional lushness. His writing about ducks and dogs and cows is axe-sharp. There is not a whiff of the bucolic pastoral or the romanticized sod here. This is a real rural ride. It is short, but crackles with latent...