'An intricately crafted, passionate and remarkable novel'

Carys Davies' novel Clear has won the English Language Wales Book of the Year prize. She told Jenny White why its Scottish setting has a lot to say about Wales

- 

SET on a remote Scottish island in 1843, Clear, Carys Davies' Wales Book of the Year Award-winning novel, explores what happens when a native language is under threat.

The book, published by Granta, is Davies' third novel following The Mission House (2020) and West (2018). It was announced last week as the winner of the Welsh-language overall prize, sponsored by Cardiff University, while Camu by Iola Ynyr (Y Lolfa) won the Welsh-language prize (see pages 18&19).

Clear was praised by the judging panel for "its story, its ambition, its sentences, and its relevance to our world today".

The panel added that it is "an intricately crafted, passionate and remarkable novel."