Daniel''s Beetles
English
By (author): Tony Bianchi
Tony Bianchi... has become one of the language's most provocative authors.
The Guardian Books Blog
Daniel's Beetles is the author's translation of his Welsh novel, Pryfeta, which won the 2007 Daniel Owen Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Wales Book of the Year (Y Lolfa).
Daniel is six. One afternoon, while playing with insects in the garden, he sees his father fall to his death. Forty years later, he remembers nothing of the event. But two failed relationships and his elderly mother's confusion bring Daniel face-to-face with his demons. Then he meets Cerys and Dr Bruno and discovers a bold new way of regaining control over the past. Daniel's Beetles is an absorbing, unnerving novel about memory and forgetting, stories and lies, language and borders.
This is an intricate and multi-layered novel, rich in ideas and eloquent in expression, which will be pored over for years to come.
Owain Wilkins, Planet
Tony Bianchi is a freelance writer and arts researcher, formerly Literature Director at the Arts Council of Wales. He is also a critic and has won national and international prizes for his poetry in Welsh. He is the author of another novel in Welsh, Esgyrn Bach (The Bone Pickers) (Y Lolfa, 2006), and a novel in English: Bumping (Alcemi, 2010), set in Newcastle.