The Blue Tent

In a lonely house deep in the Black Mountains of South Wales, a man spends insomniac nights absorbed in the ancient texts left him by his mysterious aunt. When a blue tent appears in the field at the end of his garden, his solitary life is turned inside out. But who owns the tent? And when the tent’s occupants emerge, whose story are they telling? As his life unravels, the man begins to question whether he is the orchestrator or the victim of his own experiences. Are the stories that guide or steer his life—any life—real, or merely the echo of other, possible lives?

Richard Gwyn grew up in Crickhowell, Breconshire. He spent the 1980s travelling, much of it recorded in his memoir, The Vagabond’s Breakfast, which won a Wales Book of the Year award in 2012. In 2005 he achieved best-seller status with his first novel, The Colour of a Dog Running Away (Parthian, 2005), which has since been translated into eight languages. Richard has since written two other novels, including The Blue Tent, and is the author of four collections of poetry, the most recent of them being Stowaway: A Levantine Adventure (2018).