Winner of the Hawthornden Prize

A Toy Epic is the story of three boys moving towards the threshold of adult life in the Thirties.

From differing backgrounds, their lives cross and touch until they become firm friends. Each of them, Michael, Albie and Iorwerth, take up the story in turn, creating their own particular world and contributing to the composite picture of 'one of the four comers of Wales'.

Emyr Humphreys has written a challenging novel of childhood and of Wales in the 1930s. First published in 1958, A Toy Epic is now viewed as a classic of writing from Wales. This new edition is introduced by M. Wynn Thomas, and includes an Afterword and a fragment from an earlier version of the novel.

"It has strength and beauty many more experienced writers might envy... the sense of youth is beautifully conveyed. One feels the strange mixture of nostalgia and fear that remembered boyhood rouses"
Daily Telegraph

"Emyr Humphreys has expanded his powers and strikes a new note, evocatory and lyrical. His characters are sharp and clear, more than this they change and grow, revealing new aspects, new 'characters' that strike themselves and us with an echoing surprise"
The Sunday Times

"Beautifully conceived and written"
The Observer

"Emyr Humphreys is one of the most masterful yet natural-seeming authors of fiction in these islands today"
The Scotsman

Emyr Humphreys is the author of twenty novels in English and Welsh, and has also published collections of stories and poetry. He has written screenplays and adapted other works for television and radio, in addition to producing and directing in both of those media. His novels have won the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year, Hawthornden and other prizes.