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Cockatrice Books

Y diawl a’m llaw chwith

Cockatrice Selections

Cockatrice Selections: A British Triad?

Cockatrice Books brings you fiction, translation and criticism reflecting on nationhood, identity, imperialism, fascism, political disunity and human connection.

The Sleeping Bard by Ellis Wynne

Three nightmare visions of the world, of death and of hell.

The anonymous poet is dragged from sleep by the fairies of Welsh myth, and rescued by an angel is taken to see the City of Doom, whose citizens vie for the favour of Belial’s three beautiful daughters; to the realm of King Death, the rebellious vassal of Lucifer; and finally to Hell itself, where Lucifer debates with his demons which sin shall rule Great Britain.

First published in 1703, this classic of religious allegory and Welsh prose combines all the blunt urgency of John Bunyan with the vivid social satire of Dryden and Pope, and is published in the T. Gwynn Jones translation of 1940, with an introduction by Rob Mimpriss reflecting on its political significance as the union of England and Scotland comes to an end.

Published as part of the Wales in Europe series, celebrating the past and future of Wales as an independent nation.

ISBN: 978-1-912368-31-0. Format: Paperback, 127×203mm. 176pp. Price: £9.99

A Book of Three Birds by Morgan Llwyd

Morgan Llwyd (1619-1659), the nephew of a professional soldier and magician, was a Roundhead, a millenialist, a chaplain in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and later a civil servant of the commonwealth in Wales.

His famous religious allegory, A Book of Three Birds, is considered the most important Welsh book of the Seventeenth Century, and an enduring masterpiece of Welsh prose. With its introduction reflecting on the political upheavals of our time, this new translation by Rob Mimpriss brings to life the pungency of Morgan Llwyd’s writing, the richness of his religious and political thought, and the urgency of his drama and characterisation.

‘Lucid, skilful, and above all, of enormous timely relevance.’

Jim Perrin

Published as part of the Wales in Europe series: celebrating the past and future of Wales as an independent nation.

ISBN: 978-1912368136. Format: Paperback, 127×203mm. 156pp. Price: £7.99

Pugnacious Little Trolls by Rob Mimpriss

Nominated for the Wales Book of the Year Award

In his first three short-story collections, Rob Mimpriss painstakingly mapped the unregarded lives of Welsh small-town and country-dwellers. In Pugnacious Little Trolls, he combines the skill and quiet eloquence of his earlier work with confident experimentation, with stories set among the bird-bodied harpies of Central America, among the dog-headed Cynocephali of Central Asia, among humanity’s remote descendants at the very end of the universe, and in the muddle of slag-heaps and job centres that H. G. Wells’s Country of the Blind has become. In the three stories at the heart of the collection is Tanwen, idealistic and timid, embarking on her adult life in the shadow of global warming and English nationalism.

‘Where is the Welsh short story going? Wherever Rob Mimpriss takes it.’

John O’Donoghue

‘freely and fiercely inventive short stories… supercharged with ideas’

Jon Gower, Nation Cymru

‘Beyond question Wales’s finest and most subtle short-story writer working today... A work of great beauty and subtle force, a fine, distinctive voice.’

Jim Perrin

‘bathed in white fire in every sense… Borges would happily own them.’

Gee Williams

Published as part of the Wales in Europe series: celebrating the past and future of Wales as an independent nation.

ISBN: 978-1912368242. Format: Paperback, 127×203mm. 132pp. Price: £6.99