Description

In The Dragon and the Crescent poet and critic Grahame Davies explores the relationship between Wales and Islam through a compilation of writings by Welsh authors.

Stretching back to the Crusades, through the eighteenth century and William Williams Pantycelyn's influential book on world religions, to the present-day, the book takes in a range of writing (and attitudes), including the publication of the controversial cartoons of Mohammed in the Welsh magazines Gair Rhydd and Y Llan. There are memoirs and letters from missionaries, military diaries and journals, hymns, poems and stories, travel writings and even a poem from 2006 by Gwynfor ab Ifor about the mentality of a suicide bomber.

A fascinating and at times unexpected view of Welsh, British and Islamic history.

The authors featured include: Ann Griffiths, Eluned Morgan, T Gwynn Jones, Llywelyn ap Grffudd, Cynan, TE Lawrence, Lloyd George, Wiliam Owen Roberts, Islwyn Ffowc Elis, Iwan Llwyd, Gwenallt, Gwyn Williams and Angharad Tomos.

Grahame Davies is a poet, novelist and literary critic in the Welsh language. In 2002 he won the Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Award for his poetry collection Cadwyni Rhyddid. Seren has previously published a translation of a novel, as Everything Must Change (2007), as well as Real Wrexham (2007), a work of psychogeography about his native town, in the Real series edited by Peter Finch. He now lives in Cardiff.