This is a novel about a publisher from London who moves home to Wales to find out just how deep his roots go.
In a university town by the seaside he seeks advice from range of characters: the scholar whose commitment to his work has cost him much; his wife, who has sacrificed so much in turn; the professor-turned-public-intellectual; his wife, the actress; and the artist whose pictures adorn the walls of houses throughout the town.
But what exactly is the relationship between these people?
Mary-Burdett Jones's debut novel, this is a challenging, innovative work that weaves the past, the present and the future with dreams and poetry.
'This is a substantial work which draws the reader in with its unexpected unfamiliarities and constantly shifting flow.'
- Bobi Jones
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Independent Welsh press Melin Bapur has published a new original novel, Llanllenorion / Scribblertown by Mary Burdett-Jones, which has been described as conveying "a completely new voice and perspective in the Welsh language". Llanllenorion is the original Welsh version; Scribblertown the author's own English translation of her work.
The novel describes a seaside university town not unlike recently-designated UNESCO City of Literature Aberystwyth. Its case includes a publisher who was brought up in London, a scholar who is completely dedicated to his work, an artist and an actress, among others.
Turning the pages we learn about the relationship of these characters to each other in the past and a change in perspective as we read about the dreams of the main character.
Scribblertown is a work Mary has been working on for about a decade. Professor Bobi Jones saw an early draft and described it as "a very substantial work. It draws the reader forward by the unexpected strangeness and its varied course." This is Mary Burdett-Jones's first novel, but she has already published a volume of her poetry in Welsh, Lluniadau (2020), together with a volume of Welsh translations of the German poems of Selma Merbaum, who died in the Holocaust.
Poetry plays a leading role in Scribblertown as well, as a number of Mary's poems and translations are woven into the text in a unique way.
Mary said: " The title of the book for years was 'Symphony' until I remembered the title of a number of essays on the literary figures of Llanidloes by the mid-nineteenth-century journalist Matthew Lewis on whom my husband Philip Henry Jones has done research. They described a town where there was a thriving Welsh-language literary life, 'Llanllenorion', literally 'Town of Litterateurs'."
