Mid Wales author Ian O’Brien has released a debut novel set in the area.

‘Slow the Road Shows’ is set in 1999 in the shadow of Epynt mountain, where 15-year-old Finn is about to make a grim discovery.

Can Finn protect his sister from the forces closing in? It's not just rain coming through the roof that threatens to flood them, or the social workers, or the school attendance officers. There are ghosts in the valley that will not rest.

Ian lives and works in Mid Wales, where he teaches English. Originally from Manchester, he now lives on the southern edge of the Cambrian mountains, in the shadow of Mynydd Epynt. His novelette-in-flash, 'What The Fox Brings In Its Jaw', published by Retreat West in 2020 was shortlisted for the Cambridge Prize for Flash Fiction.

Ian said: “Like my protagonist Finn, I came to live in rural Wales after growing up in post-industrial Manchester – two very different worlds. In this novel, I wanted to explore how those two worlds might connect.

“I was influenced by novels such as Donal Ryan’s 'Strange Flowers’, that examine conflict within families and tie it to the landscape, and by the kind of bittersweet nostalgia and humour in books such as ‘Mayflies’ by Andrew O’Hagan.

“It’s also about music and rebellion and how five teenagers in a clapped out Vauxhall Viva can briefly shine.

“What happened at Mynydd Epynt is not my story to tell but you cannot live in its shadow without listening to its story and considering its wider impact and so it forms an important backdrop to what is essentially a series of love stories: the love within broken families, between a rebellious teen desperate to escape the village and the boy who wants to stay, and between ourselves and the land, between city and country and between the past and the present.”