Melog
Melog (Gomer, 1997) is Mihangel Morgan's second novel. Dr Jones is an unemployed academic who busies himself editing a Welsh Encyclopedia. His dull life in a grey town in south Wales changes when, one morning, he sees a young man naked on a building top threatening to hurl himself to his death. The police persuade him to come down, and Dr Jones intervenes. He claims to know Melog, the tall, fair, alien-like youth from Lacsaria, a colony of Sacria, where the Lacsarian language has been banned, its books destroyed, and public executions are held in a festive atmosphere once a month. Melog has come to Wales in search of a lost Lacsarian manuscript, the Imalic, the only surviving copy of his country's legends. Dr Jones and Melog become close friends, and the futile quest for the Imalic begins. One of the most distinctive Welsh novels of recent years, Melog is a gentle satire of the purpose and intent which dominate people's lives in which Mihangel Morgan seems to suggest that the meaning is in the searching.
Cyfnewidfa Lên Cymru/Wales Literature Exchange