Of Talons and Teeth

Description

An historical novel set in Wales before the Industrial Revolution, as human love tries to flower amidst squalor and serfdom.

Wales, a mining village, pre-industrial revolution. A world of serfdom and squalor, its inhabitants oppressed by both Chapel conformist impulses and the predations of a new kind of capitalism being born.

Sion, a metalworker, strikes up an illicit relationship with Katherine, the wife of the mineowner’s personal dogsbody. And so begins the struggle of non-transactional and non-exploitative human love to be recognised in a place bent on the destruction and negation of that very thing.

A mix of political anger, historical excavation, Celtic mysticism, praise of the human impulse to love and rage at avarice and exploitation, Of Talons and Teeth seeks to explore that moment when human beings and the natural beauties around them were turned into mere chattels; when Mammon became the only god worth worshipping.”This unnerving tale spits and writhes off the page. Hypnotic, mythic and visceral — its prose hewn from deep beneath the soil. Griffiths is a twenty-first-century Faulkner.”
— Adelle Stripe, author of Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile

“Often untouchable and always utterly gripping, as British writers go Niall Griffiths is the very best in the business.”
— Benjamin Myers, author of The Gallows Pole

“Of Talons and Teeth affirms Griffiths as one my favorite writer’s working today. He’s a true marvel with language and in this historical exploration of man’s ongoing battle with greed and our inability to do anything but take from nature, comes the heart of a broken romantic. This is a real gem of a novel by a magician of a writer.”
— Willy Vlautin, author of The Night Always Comes

“Deeply human and knowledgeable about what it is to be human . . . The world Griffiths evokes gets into your bones.”
— Nicholas Lezard, for The Spectator

Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has now lived in Wales for over a quarter of a century. An established novelist and professor of creative writing, his work has been translated into twenty languages, adapted for the screen and widely reviewed. His works include Grits, Sheepshagger and Stump.GB

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