Niall Griffiths’ first novel ‘Grits’ portrayed the drug-deadened lives of people working under the radar of conventional society, but retained, or insisted upon their essential, human dignity. Like a rage-filled bulletin from the edges of broken Britain, Niall Griffiths’ eighth novel takes us back to where his writing journey began, to the streets of Aberystwyth and its magic-mushroomed, mystical hinterland, where ‘little bombs of bilberries nod in the grasses’ and ‘yarrow galaxies slowly help to heal the acidulated standing pools.’ 'This is a book powered along with ferocious momentum by the raw nervous energy of its characters, whose demotic, alternating narratives seem to muscle bodily off the page.Background picture by Jeff Thomas (CC BY-SA 2.0) 'Griffiths has forged a chimerical piece of radical fiction, a Blake-like reverie on the possibility (or not) of spiritual regeneration in our time.' Guardian 'Combines myth, drug culture and iconoclastic political vision in a wild music that's also a call to arms' New Statesman, Books of the Year Broken Ghost is a howl of anguish and a summoning of gods. Disturbing and unforgettable, darkly funny and deeply moving, it is written in a charged language that is vernacular, lyrical and hieratic all at once. An examination of modern humanity's desperate need to live meaningfully and vividly in a mediated world - where individual autonomy is lost and the collective heart is atomised and exploited. This is a novel that gives voices to the marginalised, the dispossessed, the forgotten. Is it a collective hallucination, a meteorological phenomenon, or something supernatural? The individuals living in these mountains are already battling their own demons - of drink, drugs, domestic violence, depression - how could an apparition unite these crushed people or their fragmented country?

'A magnificently gifted writer' Irvine WelshĪ Welsh community witnesses a strange vision: the huge spectre of a woman floating over a ridge. **WINNER OF THE 2020 WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD**

Niall griffiths broken ghost