Carys Davies – författare

WINNER OF THE WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025WINNER OF THE ONDAATJE PRIZE 2025LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE'Tender, riveting and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away' Sarah Jessica Parker'An exquisite, hopeful masterpiece' Rachel Joyce'A poignant, profound depiction of both solitude and connection. Carys Davies has written a masterful, discreetly sublime book' Hernan Diaz1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Unaware of the stranger's intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile, on the mainland, John's wife, Mary, anxiously awaits news of his mission.Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Sunday Times (UK) * The Guardian (UK) * The Washington Independent Review of Books * Sydney Morning Herald * The Los Angeles Public Library * The Irish Independent * Real Simple * Finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize “Carys Davies is a deft, audacious visionary.” —Téa ObrehtWhen widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his only daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister and heads west. With only a barnyard full of miserable animals and her dead mother’s gold ring to call her own, Bess, unprotected and approaching womanhood, fills lonely days tracing her father’s route on maps at the subscription library and waiting for his letters to arrive. Bellman, meanwhile, wanders farther and farther from home, across harsh and alien landscapes, in reckless pursuit of the unknown. From Frank O’Connor Award winner Carys Davies, West is a spellbinding and timeless epic-in-miniature, an eerie parable of the American frontier and an electric monument to possibility.

“Tender, riveting, and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away…What a thrill.” —Sarah Jessica Parker A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Historical Fiction Book of 2024 A Vogue, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Best Book of the Year Winner of the 2024 Bookmark Festival Book of Year Finalist for the Libby Book of the Year in Historical Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Books Are My Bag Award, the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award, the Saltire Society Literary Award, Wales Book of the Year, and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Longlisted for Blackwell’s Book of the Year, the Highland Book Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and the Europese Literatuurprijs A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last remaining inhabitant—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. “Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men…pack[ing] a great deal of power into a compact tale” (The Wall Street Journal) about connection, home, and hope—in which John begins to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar sees himself reflected through the eyes of another person for the first time in decades. Unfolding during the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—a period of the 19th century which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular novel explores what binds us together in the face of insurmountable difference, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can endure despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, “a love letter to the scorching power of language” (The Guardian), Clear is “a jewel of a novel” (The Washington Post)—a profound and unforgettable read.

“A perfectly formed gem ...”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEWFrom remote Australian settlements to the snows of Siberia, from Colorado to Cumbria, restless teenagers, middle-aged civil servants, and Quaker spinsters traverse expanses of solitude to reveal the secrets of the human heart.Written with raw and rigorous prose, charged throughout by a prickly wit, the stories in The Redemption of Galen Pike remind us how little we know of the lives of others.Carys Davies is currently a 2016-2017 Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.

From remote Australian settlements to the snows of Siberia, from Colorado to Cumbria, restless teenagers, middle-aged civil servants, and Quaker spinsters traverse expanses of solitude to reveal the secrets of the human heart. Spare, precise, and charged with a prickly wit, the stories in Carys Davies''s sparkling second collection remind us how little we know of the lives of others.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE'This short novel will live on in your imagination long after you read the last page' Claire MessudWhen Cy Bellman, American settler and widowed father of ten-year-old Bess, reads in the newspaper that huge ancient bones have been discovered in a Kentucky swamp, he leaves his small Pennsylvania farm and daughter to find out if the rumours are true: that the giant monsters are still alive, and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. West is the extraordinary story of a quest for a myth, of Bellman's journey into the unknown and of Bess, waiting at home for her father to return, facing monsters of her own. It is an eerie and timeless epic-in-miniature. 'One of the best books I've read this year... It's a book you can read in a day and that will resonate all year long in your head' Sunday Times 'Carys Davies is a deft, audacious visionary... Twisting the heart as few others can...' Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife

THE SUNDAY TIMES NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2020'A compelling read. Carys Davies has an amazing gift' Penelope LivelyFrom the prize-winning author of West, a collision between old and new, east and west, in a former British hill station in South India.Fleeing the dark undercurrents of his life in Britain, Hilary Byrd takes refuge in Ooty, a hill station in South India. There he finds solace in life's simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla have taken Hilary under their wing.As Hilary's friendship with the young woman grows, he begins to wonder whether his purpose lies in this new relationship. But religious and nationalist tensions are brewing and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems...'Brilliantly crafted' Daily Mail'An absolute triumph' Cynan Jones'Subtle with nuance and alive with immediacy' Sunday Times

The Sunday Times (London) Novel of the Year “Luminous…a writer to watch—and to savor.” —Oprah Daily From the award-winning author of West and The Redemption of Galen Pike, a “sublime” (The Toronto Star) and propulsive novel that follows an Englishman seeking refuge in a remote hill town in India who gets caught in the crossfire of local tensions.In this “jewel of a novel” (The Observer), Hilary Byrd flees his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in England for a former British hill station in south India. Charmed by the foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where, after a chance meeting, the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla take Hilary under their wing. The Padre is concerned for Priscilla’s future, and as Hilary’s friendship with the young woman grows, he begins to wonder whether his purpose lies in this new relationship. But religious tensions are brewing and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems. A “skillful drama of well-meant misunderstandings and cultural divisions” (The Wall Street Journal), The Mission House boldly and imaginatively explores postcolonial ideas in a world fractured between faith and nonbelief, young and old, imperial past and nationalistic present. Tenderly subversive and meticulously crafted, it is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a modern world.

“Tender, riveting, and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away…What a thrill.” —Sarah Jessica Parker A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Historical Fiction Book of 2024 A Vogue, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Best Book of the Year Winner of the 2024 Bookmark Festival Book of Year Finalist for the Libby Book of the Year in Historical Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Books Are My Bag Award, the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award, the Saltire Society Literary Award, Wales Book of the Year, and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Longlisted for Blackwell’s Book of the Year, the Highland Book Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and the Europese Literatuurprijs A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last remaining inhabitant—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. “Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men…pack[ing] a great deal of power into a compact tale” (The Wall Street Journal) about connection, home, and hope—in which John begins to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar sees himself reflected through the eyes of another person for the first time in decades. Unfolding during the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—a period of the 19th century which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular novel explores what binds us together in the face of insurmountable difference, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can endure despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, “a love letter to the scorching power of language” (The Guardian), Clear is “a jewel of a novel” (The Washington Post)—a profound and unforgettable read.

Shortlisted for the 2009 Roland Mathias PrizeShortlisted for the 2009 Calvino PrizeLonglisted for the 2008 International Frank O’Connor Short Story AwardLonglisted for the 2008 Wales Book of the Year: FictionFrom the award-winning author of West and The Mission HouseSome New Ambush is the first collection of short stories from award-winning writer Carys Davies. Love, loss, birth, death, betrayal, madness – they all lie in wait for Davies’s characters in their startlingly different worlds: a dry cleaner’s shop in contemporary Chicago, a mining town in South Wales in the sixties, a lunatic asylum in nineteenth century northern England.Shot through with wit and aching emotional poignancy, these stories tell of how we attempt to confront the things life throws in our path – often when we least expect them, and in places where we never thought to look. They tell of the mistakes we make along the way, and of how we try to deal with the whole difficult, unpredictable business. There is the boy who steps into his best friend’s clothes in a desperate bid to fulfil his dreams, the man who comes up with an amazing new invention to win the heart of the woman he loves, the bored young wife doomed to live on an island where everything is red, the middle-aged woman who finds a baby in the sand and passes it off as her own.

Winner of the 2015 International Frank O’Connor Short Story AwardWinner of the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered PrizeShortlisted for the 2015 Wales Book of the Year: FictionShortlisted for the 2015 Edge Hill Short Story PrizeThe Globe 100: The Best International Fiction of 2017In a remote Australian settlement a young wife with an untellable secret reluctantly invites her neighbour into her home. A Quaker spinster offers companionship to a condemned man in a Colorado jail. In the ice and snows of Siberia an office employee from Birmingham witnesses a scene that will change her life. At a jubilee celebration in a northern English town a middle-aged alderman opens his heart to Queen Victoria. A teenage daughter leaves home in search of adventure. High in the Cumbrian fells a woman seeks help from her father’s enemy.Spare, precise, charged with a prickly wit, the stories in Carys Davies's sparkling second collection remind us how little we know of the lives of others.

The Sunday Times (London) Novel of the Year “Luminous…a writer to watch—and to savor.” —Oprah Daily From the award-winning author of West and The Redemption of Galen Pike, a “sublime” (The Toronto Star) and propulsive novel that follows an Englishman seeking refuge in a remote hill town in India who gets caught in the crossfire of local tensions.In this “jewel of a novel” (The Observer), Hilary Byrd flees his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in England for a former British hill station in south India. Charmed by the foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where, after a chance meeting, the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla take Hilary under their wing. The Padre is concerned for Priscilla’s future, and as Hilary’s friendship with the young woman grows, he begins to wonder whether his purpose lies in this new relationship. But religious tensions are brewing and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems. A “skillful drama of well-meant misunderstandings and cultural divisions” (The Wall Street Journal), The Mission House boldly and imaginatively explores postcolonial ideas in a world fractured between faith and nonbelief, young and old, imperial past and nationalistic present. Tenderly subversive and meticulously crafted, it is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a modern world.