A translation of the award-winning Welsh novel Y Pla, contrasting the impoverished, restricted life of a remote medieval community with the elegance and refinement of Cairo's renowned Madrasa Academy.

Cyfieithiad i'r Saesneg o'r nofel Y Pla, nofel â himor dywyll wedi ei gosod yn yr Oesoedd Canol, a enillodd wobr Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru ym 1988.

Pestilence is an apocalyptic novel, set in the fourteenth century at the time of the Black Death. Constantly switching between the adventures of Salah Ibn al Khatib, a young Muslim who is on his way from the Madrasa in Cairo to assassinate the King of France, and village life in Dolbenmaen in Eifionydd with its feudal cast of characters, Wiliam Owen Roberts creates an imaginative universe which encompasses the major social and religious features of the late Medieval period in Europe.

In spite of the deadliness of his mission, Salah is a Candide-like figure whose every move ends in disaster. By turns swindled, mistreated and marooned, he eventually ends up in Eifionydd where his alien looks and by that time strange behaviour terrify the villagers into thinking he is the Anti-Christ of whose coming the Plague is a portent. This is a book in which no-one is who or what they seem. At an audience given by the pope in Avignon, Clement VI is impersonated first by a double, then by the court jester. The Abbot with whom Salah travels proves to be a woman, and a much-trumpeted mysterious figure eagerly awaited by a group of nuns turns out to be a giraffe. At times horrifying, repulsive and grotesque, Salah’s experiences are also very funny.

While Salah’s social curve is downwards, from upper-class young student to wild-eyed outcast in the Welsh forests, the (surviving) serfs of Dolbenmaen move in the opposite direction. Initially they lead a brutish and downtrodden existence, but the decimation of the population due to the Plague tears the veil from the power structure and allows them to become freemen, selling their labour to the highest bidder. It is the dawn of capitalism.

Anyone interested in the Medieval period for its own sake will, I think, be disappointed by Pestilence, which portrays it entirely in terms of hypocrisy, madness, cruelty and fear. However, as a comment on the human condition, the novel is provocative, disturbing and entertaining in equal measure. The early modern period of imperialism and slavery is of course the subject of Paradwys (Paradise), Wiliam Owen Roberts’s great novel published in 2001 (after a gap of ten years) which can be read as a sequel to Pestilence. Presumably his next novel will be set in the the nineteenth century. I look forward to reading it.

Helle Michelsen

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio¹r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.