Drift: Winner of the Wales Book of the Year

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The film adaptation - with a screenplay by Lewis herself - went on to win six Welsh BAFTAS and the Spirit of the Festival Award at the 2010 Celtic Media Festival. So we met up a few times, she asked me some questions, but you have to leave somebody to find a life for the book in another language. In addition, the Wales Arts Review’s People’s Choice Award and Golwg360’s Barn y Bobl Award winners were announced, revealing which books were the favourites among the public. Mark: There’s such a strong sense of place in Drift, with the stone cottage overlooking the cove, the empty holiday homes along the coast, and just being out in nature. Some of the other characters were perhaps less well drawn, or maybe the narrative just had too many perspectives - a local couple, army officers, Nefyn’s brother.

Hamza himself has spent nine years as a prisoner in different camps, with no hope of an ending: “[He] had been moved. The novel opens in a wind-torn cove, a place where the reclusive Nefyn loiters to collect “shells and whelks, egg cases and seeds”. I was so invested in the characters worlds, and the balance that Lewis captures of being cloistered by a small village existence, while also freed by a world at the mercy of the coast.I’ve worked with screen for a long time, and I find it a brilliant antidote to when I’m writing novels and working on my own. Jasmine Donahaye in The Conversation UK on Victorian imperialist naming and claiming of Palestine's 'natural resources for western science, and for personal glory. The novels claiming the overall prizes this year are both unique, yet they are linked by their sense of place; their magical words are rooted in specific Welsh landscapes. You can't help but fall in love with her as you watch as her world changes when she rescues a stranger on the beach. It is a stunning piece of fiction, that swells with a magical lyricism and captures with sheer luminosity its characters, story and sense of place.

Hamza, a Syrian refugee detained in a military camp, finds himself stranded and wounded within the boundaries of a small community. Indeed the sea is her true element and she seems somewhat stranded on land, where she lives in a clifftop cottage that has seen better days and needs a new roof. The small fishing village with its army living almost on top of them is claustrophobic,giving the wide expanse of the sea a greater feeling of freedom.To see how the myths of the selkies and the legend of the goddess Atargatis are wed to a love against the world and a firm need to fulfil your destiny. Lewis offers an alternative portrayal of love, yet just as tender, in the characters of Efa and Emrys (with Emrys’s name meaning immortal in Welsh), so the subplot weaves beautifully into the main themes of the narrative.

It centres around a small welsh village by the sea, and the life of twins, one boy, one girl, who live there.But more importantly, this is the story of a woman who refuses to obey and the ‘’Other’’ who refuses to comply.

The Creative Non-fiction Award was won by Gareth Evans-Jones for Cylchu Cymru (Y Lolfa), while Gwenllian Ellis took home The Golwg360 Barn y Bobl Award for Sgen i’m Syniad – Snogs, Secs, Sens (Y Lolfa).

I think we’re encouraged to think in broad strokes, to pull back and make generalisations about peoples. Tristram was a Victorian clergyman and ornithologist who categorised a list of birds he’d found in Palestine. Drift – Caryl Lewis’s first novel written in English – is a story submerged in mystery, alluding to a world beyond what is deemed rational, with the sea at the heart of it all. The evening was led by presenter Ffion Dafis, winner of the 2022 Overall Welsh Language Award ( Mori, Y Lolfa) , and included a performance by National Poet of Wales, Hanan Issa , a speech by Literature Wales’ Executive Director, Claire Furlong, adjudications from the judges and a contribution by representatives of Golwg360 and the Wales Arts Review.