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Writer versus preacher: this book shows how this struggle has lain at the heart of Welsh writing and culture for the past two hundred years, intimately shaping the English language literature produced by Wales. Starting with a simple explanation of the history and character of Welsh Nonconformity, it traces the growing textual response to Nonconformity’s hegemonic cultural power from the eighteenth century onwards, culminating in twentieth-century writers’ attempts to undermine it by wresting words from the control of the pulpit. It also uncovers a whole new body of nineteenth-century fiction from Wales, and re-defines Dylan Thomas’s debt to his Nonconformist ancestors.

In 1920, the chance to travel to India on a business trip is a great boon for a smart and talented young man. Until he wakes up in a Calcutta jail, framed for murder. Benjamin Albert is a brilliant rising star at his firm, a war hero and a loving husband and father. But when his own government turns its back on him and leaves him to rot in prison 8,000 miles from home, his wife Catherine must take matters into her own hands and battle a ruthless and unscrupulous corporation abetted by a corrupt colonial government. Timeless issues like racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism and women's rights are exposed during Catherine's race to save Benjamin.