The Writers of Wales Database

GRIFFITHS, NIALL

You can contact Niall through his publishers, Jonathan Cape on: 0207 840 8400
Website: http://www.niallgriffiths.com

Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool in 1966 and, after leaving school at 15, was sent to Snowdonia on an outward bound trip as a teenager after a series of petty crimes. Inspired by his experiences, Niall eventually returned to school and went on to study for an English degree. He gained a PhD at Aberystwyth in post–war British poetry. His novels interweave his love for the Welsh landscape with his experiences as a disaffected youth. He has lived in Wales over a decade, and currently inhabits a cottage in Penrhyncoch, near Aberystwyth. Niall has published six novels, with two more in the pipeline and teaches creative writing across Europe. Stump (Jonathan Cape, 2004) won the Wales Book of the Year Award in 2004. Kelly & Victor (Jonathan Cape, 2002) is currently being made into a feature film.

Niall is a Fellow of The Welsh Academy.

Reviews:

With respect to Sheepshagger (Jonathan Cape, 2001)
 
”…With a modern sensibility informed by Greek tragedy and the Blakean sublime, Sheepshagger demands total engagement, and is never less than compelling; the range of Griffiths’ achievement is as exhilarating as the reach of his ambition…”
The Independent

With respect to Wreckage (Bloomsbury, 2005)

”… The author’s presence in the story often has a macaronic effect: against the cryptic, comedic drumbeat of the scouse, he plays a range of ventriloquised voices - from Wales, Ireland, England - which ring with various dissonances, from stridor to requiem. Griffiths’ macho world has no room for, or interest in, harmony, except in the form of nostalgia. Exuberant wordplay enacts a dynamic of conflict. …”
Stevie Davies


Selected Publications:
Grits (Jonathan Cape, 2000)
Sheepshagger (Jonathan Cape, 2001)
Kelly & Victor (Jonathan Cape, 2002)
Stump (Jonathan Cape, 2004)
Wreckage (Bloomsbury, 2005)
Runt (Jonathan Cape, 2006)
Bring It Back Home (Quick Reads) (Accent, 2007)
Real Aberystwyth (Seren, 2008)
Real Liverpool (Seren, 2008)
The Dreams of Max and Ronnie (New Stories from the Mabinogion) (Seren, 2010)
Ten Pound Pom (Parthian, 2011)

Contributed to:
Sea Stories (contributor) (National Maritime Museum, 2007)



Grits (Jonathan Cape, 2000)

Set in the socially complex late 1990s, a group of young drifters find themselves together in a small coastal village in West Wales, brought there as they attempt to escape their various addictions (drugs, alcohol, crime, promiscuity) and find a place where they can dissect and extract meaning from their damaged lives.

The setting of the novel is an intriguing premise in itself: an isolated village, wedged between two of natures’ more inhospitable locales, the sea and mountains. It is a cunning tool, reinforcing the trapped nature of these lives, no matter the reasons they ended up there. Each of the characters narrative is written in a "phonetic" style, which allows their personalities and emotions to erupt from the page.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover



Runt (Jonathan Cape, 2006)

On leaving school, a sixteen-year-old boy goes to live with his uncle on a remote Welsh hill-farm. His aunt recently committed suicide after losing her livestock in the foot-and-mouth epidemic and his uncle has turned, once again, to the bottle.

The boy is an innocent, a spiritual savant; his uncle sees him as a shaman. An unwitting repository of folk memory, he is a boy from the margins: barely educated but possessed of extraordinary insights; barely literate but able to speak a language of his own - a poetry laden with Pagan and Christian myth. He is unaware that he is gifted, unaware of what he knows in general - which is probably for the best since the enormity of his knowledge, were it to be understood, would crush him.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover




Bring It Back Home (Quick Reads) (Accent, 2007)

Chased by a hit-man, a young man returns home from London to a small town in Wales. Reconciliation with his family is alternated with his pursuer’s progress. A long criminal connection is revealed but can he escape the sins of his fathers?

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover