Roger Granelli

Roger Granelli was born and bred in Wales, and educated at the University of Warwick and Cardiff University. He is a writer, a professional musician and also a landscape photographer.

He has published ten novels and a novella of varying styles, from literary and historical fiction to crime fiction. He has won three writing awards for his work, and has had many of his short stories published in numerous literary magazines and broadcast on BBC Radio. His collected stories, Any Kind of Broken Man, with a foreword by Phil Rickman, are forthcoming from Cockatrice late in 2022.

River of Hope by Roger Granelli

River of Hope

For the doctor and missionary, Albert Schweitzer, life on the banks of the Ogowe river has settled into a kind of tranquillity. Since returning to Gabon from his wartime internment in France he has rebuilt his hospital, and when not treating his patients for leprosy, scabies or gangrene he has his music, his letters from his wife, and his books.

Then the Welshman, Adam Hope, comes to Lambaréné, a riverboat captain and trader in alcohol and timber, deeply troubled not only by his actions during the Great War but by his complicity in the injustices of colonialism. With him comes Pieters the Belgian, dissolute and degenerate, and between them they wield the power to destroy Schweitzer’s work — or save it.

This new novel by the award-winning writer, Roger Granelli, is at once a vivid evocation of the beauties and horrors of the primeval forest; a profound meditation on redemption, violence and revenge; and an intricate portrayal of colonial relationships as Europe’s age of dominance comes to an end.

Any Kind of Broken Man: Collected Stories by Roger Granelli

With a foreword by Phil Rickman

A veteran of the war with Japan confronts the Japanese factory which has revivified his valley. An ageing Navajo on the edge of the desert meets his doctor son’s white bride. A young jazz musician walks into a club with a pistol in his pocket, and a young criminal from the valleys who is suspected of murder finds peace of mind on a Scottish beach.

Grounded in the post-industrial communities of Wales, yet encompassing Spain, Malaysia and the Florida Keys, this collection spans the career of a prominent novelist from the early 1990s to the present day. Drug dealers, labourers, invalids and war criminals confront the start of a new century, the death of old certainties and old ways of life, the comforting weight of bitterness and the fearful beginnings of hope.

‘Roger Granelli’s books are incredibly hard to put down.’

The Big Issue

‘His characters breathe, make you care. One day the people that count will realise that Roger Granelli is… the best un-sung novelist in Wales.’

Phil Rickman

‘Granelli has a gift for making characters emerge, for letting actions speak for themselves.’

New Welsh Review