Bringing together the best of Wales' review-essays, including a comparison of new editions of nature classics, 'Back to the Land' by Pippa Marland. The books under review, Thomas Firbank's I Bought a Mountain and Margiad Evans' Autobiography take contrasting blustering and humble approaches to stepping over the sub/urban doorstep into nature. A showcase of new nonfiction, previewing forthcoming titles from some of Wales' key English-language publishers, exploring books on anti-Welsh media vitriol covering the early Manic Street Preachers, and historical flooding and the riches of an Eton-owned Benedictine fishery on the Gwent Levels. In original fiction: a wonderful story about a teenage boy on the cusp of bodily and emotional change, 'Trout', by Satterday Shaw, and a second, finely crafted story about the effect of geographical dislocation on teenage identity emergence, 'Another Place' by Philippa Holloway, set on Crosby beach. Plus Editorial by Gwen Davies and a new opinion feature, Last Page, by Richard Lewis Davies, in which the writers note that magazines in Wales are undergoing a transition, during which readers and subscribers will need to step up to the plate if a commitment to expressing – without interference - our particular place and time, is to be maintained. EDITORIAL Half-in, half-out Gwen Davies NONFICTION Bears at the Fridge: From Goldcliff to Whitson Preview extract from This Stolen Land by Marsha O'Mahony The Kinnock Factor: The Manics and Anti-Welshness Edited abridged preview from International Velvet by Neil Collins FICTION Another Place Story by Philippa Holloway Trout Story by Satterday Shaw ESSAYS Dark Formula Timothy Laurence Marsh on why reckless travel writing matters Books for Alien Girls JL George's personal and practical reflections on the role neurodivergence can and should play when writing fiction REVIEW-ESSAYS Back to the Land Pippa Marland on two nature memoir classics, one of hubristic bluster, the other humbly receptive 'Queer Old Codgers' Claire Pickard on the portrayal of highly nuanced gay identities and history in recent nonfiction titles and a major short story anthology THE LAST PAGE Back to the Future Richard Lewis Davies on how a culture with ambition needs critics and readers

A WWII-era Welsh barmaid begins a secret relationship with a German POW in this “beautiful” novel by the author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself (Ann Patchett). Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, this critically acclaimed debut novel traces the intersection of disparate lives in wartime. When a prisoner-of-war camp is established near her village, seventeen-year-old barmaid Esther Evans finds herself strangely drawn to the camp and its forlorn captives. She is exploring the camp boundary when an astonishing thing occurs: A young German corporal calls out to her from behind the fence. From that moment on, the two begin an unlikely—and perilous—romance. Meanwhile, a German-Jewish interrogator travels to Wales to investigate Britain’s most notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this richly drawn and thought-provoking “tour de force,” all will come to question the meaning of love, family, loyalty, and national identity (The New Yorker). “If you loved The English Patient, there’s probably a place in your heart for The Welsh Girl.” —USA Today “Davies’s characters are marvelously nuanced.” —Los Angeles Times “Beautifully conjures a place and its people, in an extraordinary time . . . A rare gem.” —Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs “This first novel by Davies, author of two highly praised short story collections, has been anticipated—and, with its wonderfully drawn characters, it has been worth the wait.” —Booklist, starred review

A book of new paintings and works by Shani Rhys James, one of Britain’s leading and most distinctive artists, this collection reveals how her latest work has developed a lighter palette to deal with new subjects of flowers and colorful, patterned wallpaper backgrounds. These themes of domesticity are not anodyne however, but informed by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story about the plight of women in the home, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Rhys James’ paintings continue her exploration of the position of women in society, and in particular how women can be imprisoned by consumerism and the domestic environment. The more than 50 images in the book include photographs of a new development in Rhys James’s work: automata based on the motifs of past paintings. The paintings are accompanied by a foreword by the artist and critic William Packer, a perceptive interview of Rhys James by Francesca Rhydderch, in which the artist discusses her background and her interest in the position of women, and an essay by Edward Lucie-Smith that explores her paintings in an art history context.

The paths of two women from different walks of life intersect amid counterculture of the 1960s in this haunting and provocative novel from the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Christian Science Monitor Sigrid Nunez's The Last of Her Kind introduces two women who meet as freshmen on the Columbia campus in 1968. Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which she was born. She is mortified by Ann's romanticization of the underprivileged class, which Georgette herself is hoping college will enable her to escape. After the violent fight that ends their friendship, Georgette wants only to forget Ann and to turn her attention to the troubled runaway kid sister who has reappeared after years on the road. Then, in 1976, Ann is convicted of murder. At first, Ann's fate appears to be the inevitable outcome of her belief in the moral imperative to "make justice" in a world where "there are no innocent white people." But, searching for answers to the riddle of this friend of her youth, Georgette finds more complicated and mysterious forces at work. The novel's narrator Georgette illuminates the terrifying life of this difficult, doomed woman, and in the process discovers how much their early encounter has determined her own path, and why, decades later, as she tells us, "I have never stopped thinking about her."

The first cultural history of English Welsh duality - an identification with two constituent nations at once - that explores how 'Welshness' was imagined, performed, and mobilised in England during and between the two world wars.

The incredibly true story of Anna Kashfi and her marriage to Hollywood's greatest star, written by film and television producer Sarah Broughton. In October 1957 Marlon Brando married a young studio actress called Anna Kashfi. He was thirty-three and at the pinnacle of his beautiful fame having recently won an Oscar for On the Waterfront. The wedding was front-page news around the world. His new bride was twenty-three, claimed to be an Indian princess and was pregnant. The day after the wedding a factory worker living in Wales, William O'Callaghan, revealed that Brando's bride was in fact his daughter, Joan O'Callaghan and had been a butcher's assistant from Cardiff. This book sets out to discover who was telling the truth and who was lying – and, perhaps more importantly, why?

This book examines how Indigenous Peoples around the world are demanding greater data sovereignty, and challenging the ways in which governments have historically used Indigenous data to develop policies and programs. In the digital age, governments are increasingly dependent on data and data analytics to inform their policies and decision-making. However, Indigenous Peoples have often been the unwilling targets of policy interventions and have had little say over the collection, use and application of data about them, their lands and cultures. At the heart of Indigenous Peoples’ demands for change are the enduring aspirations of self-determination over their institutions, resources, knowledge and information systems. With contributors from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, North and South America and Europe, this book offers a rich account of the potential for Indigenous data sovereignty to support human flourishing and to protect against the ever-growing threats of data-related risks and harms. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429273957, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license