Y diawl a’m llaw chwith
Prayer at the End: Twenty Three Stories
Prayer at the End: Twenty-Three Stories is the third of a series of three collections by Rob Mimpriss. It is preceded by Reasoning and For His Warriors.
When women asked Derek Roberts about the scar on his shoulder, he would say that he had born with three arms and the doctors had left him two. If they laughed too loudly or demanded the truth he would explain that he could have been born one of identical twins, but this second twin had never separated or matured, developing only as a nerveless excrescence that the doctors had removed. And he might also say that the loss made him sad: sad that he could have had a brother, could have been twice the man he was in the world, sad also that but for chance he would have been the stunted one, the spare limb.
A cigarette quenched in the Menai Strait makes a man vow to live a selfish life. The memory of an unborn twin makes a man regret the selfish life he has lived. An elderly shopkeeper befriends the teenagers outside his shop, and a lonely householder sets out to confront the trespassers on his land.
‘Heaving with loss, regret, and familial bonds.’
Annexe Magazine
‘Whilst the publication dates of Rob Mimpriss’ three short story collections span a decade — from 2005 to 2015 — the fluency between volumes belies this interval. Reasoning, For His Warriors and Prayer at the End are dark, dense reads. This Welsh writer has a practised confidence, and each of his seventy-three stories collected here is marked by an indelibly bleak angle into society.’
Sophie Baggott, New Welsh Review
‘In the most seemingly unremarkable of Rob Mimpriss’s pieces there is a skill, and a mystery and elusiveness to that skill, which other short-story writers might envy. This is a masterful collection.’
Gee Williams
‘Quietly written, contemplative... whose powerhouse is the depth of its moral reflection.’
Siân Preece, Rhys Davies Competition
‘An immaculate collection.’
Nigel Jarrett
About the Author
Rob Mimpriss is the author of Reasoning: Twenty Stories, For His Warriors: Thirty Stories, Prayer at the End: Twenty-Three Stories and Pugnacious Little Trolls; the editor of Dangerous Asylums, an anthology of fiction by Gee Williams, Glenda Beagan, Carys Bray and others, commissioned by the North Wales Mental Health Research Project; and a contributor to Land of Change, an anthology of Welsh radical prose forthcoming from Culture Matters, and to Brush With Fate, an anthology of short fiction by Tristan Hughes, Rachel Trezise, Nigel Jarrett and others in Arabic translation by Hala Salah Eldin Hussein. He has reviewed for New Welsh Review, published criticism of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Robert Olmstead, and translated prose by Gwenallt Jones, Angharad Tomos and Manon Steffan Ros. His translations of Morgan Llwyd, Owen Wynne Jones and Richard Hughes Williams are also published by Cockatrice. He is a Member of the Welsh Academy.
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Paperback: ISBN:978-1912368129 | Format: 12.7×20.3cm / 5×8” | Length: 152 pages | Price: £7.99.
Ebook: ISBN: 978-1912368549 | Format: DRM-free epub | File size: 9MB | Price: £1.99.
Book Bundle: Reasoning, For His Warriors, Prayer at the End | Price: £23.97 £19.99
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