Whaling

1790. Nantucket whalers are invited to found the port of Milford Haven in Wales. What does the arrival of these hardy Quakers – immigrants to America a century before – mean for the local people? And what is the meaning of the beached whale that preceded them? Two cultures rub against each other and distrust grows, driven by the local preacher. As Whaling unfolds concern swerves into hysteria against the incomers and the preacher plans a grotesque, Jonah-inspired fate for the whalers. Nathan Munday’s debut novel is an exciting mélange of original fiction, historical writing and whaling images. In it he explores our relationship with the natural world, the boundary between faith and superstition, and the age old problem of immigration. Set in historical fact this is a narrative at once modern and contemporaneous, the writing rich in imagery and deceptively tense as its story slides into allegory.

Nathan Munday is a young writer from Carmarthenshire who lives near Bridgend. He won the M Wynn Thomas New Scholar’ s Prize in 2016 for an essay on RS Thomas, and was second in the New Welsh Review Writings Awards for Seven Days: A Pyrenean Adventure (Parthian, 2017). Until recently he was guardian of Ty Mawr Wybrnant, the Snowdonian birthplace of Bible translator William Morgan. He has published stories, poems and reviews in a variety of magazines, including Cheval, Wales Arts Review, and New Welsh Review.