Octogenarian language geek Vernon, who's never written a book, tries to find a way to write the story of his long marriage to Hannah. Under the comic surface of Vernon's pompous voice hides a story of murderous fantasy, obsession, passion and regret. A verbally brilliant tragicomic short novel with some surprising twists and a moving denouement.
Christopher Meredith Book order






- 2021
- 2021
Christopher Meredith's new poetry collection Still, uses the title word as a fulcrum to balance various paradoxical concerns: stillness & motion, memory & forgetting, sanity & madness, survival & extinction. Lively & thought-provoking, this is a beautifully crafted, humane & intelligent collection.
- 2018
In Brief Lives, six fictions by prize-winning author Christopher Meredith take us from the South China Sea in 1946 through a series of vivid tales in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to a climactic story set at the end of time. These are moving stories executed in precise and luminous prose by a key Welsh writer at the height of his powers.
- 2013
Exploring the intricate landscapes of the Song of Songs, this book delves into how spatial relationships shape its themes and meanings. By challenging contemporary approaches in biblical spatial studies, it employs innovative critical tools to analyze and critique the poetic spaces within the text. The work invites readers to consider the implications of these unique panoramas on our understanding of literary space, revealing deeper insights into the poem's subject matter and its broader literary significance.
- 2013
Air Histories
- 63 pages
- 3 hours of reading
Christopher Meredith's new poetry collection, 'Air Histories', is his fourth from Seren. One of the best writers of his generation in the UK, the rich textures of his work mirror the landscapes and complex histories of places he knows.
- 2012
The Book of Idiots
- 232 pages
- 9 hours of reading
The narrative unfolds as Wil Daniel, in a tipsy and disheveled state, shares a story with Dean that blurs the lines between ghostly intrigue and romantic entanglement. This tale oscillates between farce and tragedy, inviting readers to navigate its ambiguous themes and unexpected twists.
- 2005
Best known as a novelist, this poet uses fiction-writing techniques to create memorable settings and characters, and a narrative voice that ranges from contemplation to irony. Darker forces of alienation also intrude in the form of preoccupations about belonging and dislocation, belief and doubt, rigidity and movement, and time-honored questions about how the real world is changed by the attempt to capture it in art.
- 1998
Sidereal Time
- 250 pages
- 9 hours of reading
Clint and Dustin are coconuts, 10L have turned into three-toed sloths, Gron is becoming Zero Mostel, the lower sixth is an airliner of people about to fall out of the sky, and you, you've turned into a three-eyed Martian who speaks a nounless language and has forgotted to pay the child minder. But what's all this got to do with sixteenth century Ermland? It's an ordinary week in post-industrial south wales, and alienated desperation is as much fun as it's ever been. Sidereal Time, starting with the experiences of Sarah, a school teacher feeling the first intimations of middle age, explores the cussed paradox of the way life can be predictable and yet not follow any script you've prepared.
- 1997
Shifts
- 260 pages
- 10 hours of reading
An edition of a classic post-industrial novel, published with a new afterword by Richard Poole. The novel charts the lives of four closely bound characters, against the background of a declining steelworks. Originally published in 1988.
- 1995
A novel where Griffri ap Berddig, a poet at the court of a minor Welsh prince in the twelfth century, tells his life story to a Cistercian monk.