Addlands

Across seventy years, from the Second World War to the present, this novel follows one farming household in Wales. Its title refers to the unploughed strip at the edge of a field, the part worked last of all.

Idris Hamer runs Funnon Farm. He is a hard, determined man who lives by the plough and his daily prayers, and he is still shadowed by his youth in the trenches of France. His son Oliver, a junior boxing champion and a local character known for his wild behaviour, seems bound to his corner of the country from birth. Between the two men stands Etty, a woman whom the world of her time is ill-equipped to understand.

Beneath the ordinary rhythms of farm life run old blood feuds and major revelations. The novel traces a traditional rural way of life coming apart under the pressures of a changing century, while the land itself remains constant, a harsh, dazzling and haunting terrain.