Literature Wales Newsletter
The Writers of Wales Database
BUSH, ALLAN
Allan Bush is a retired building surveyor who has lived and worked in Cardiff all his life, though he also has a passion for Italy. He published his first novel, entitled Last Bird Singing, with Seren in 2008. This work traces one man’s inner life through the dark streets of his home city - Cardiff. The walls, pubs and streets of Wales’ capital city loom large in this intense story of loneliness and loss. Allan won the fiction catgeory of the Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards 2008. He is a Member of Academi.Reviews:
With respect to Last Bird Singing (Seren, 2008)
“…To be sucked into the slipstream of this ice-cold odyssey through Cardiff past and present is to confront a brute reality which Allan Bush creates in prose as clear and iridescent as oil-slicked puddles on a city street. No one, but no one, has ever written about Cardiff’s deep reality like Bush does: attempts at Noir pale into insignificance before its deep and disturbing blackness of vision…”
Professor Dai Smith
“…Not just a finger on the pulse of a city, but the probing of its deep wounds through the unfolding of a father-son relationship in a fractured family. Allan Bush’s novel is visceral, scalpel-sharp, and a run through with a vein of tenderness and love. This is uncompromising storytelling in stark and beautiful prose…”
Des Barry
Selected Publications:
Last Bird Singing (Seren, 2008)