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Pantglas

In his substantial body of postmodernist fiction Morgan experiments with fictionality, playfulness, and the subversion of expectation. He also explores the possibilities of intertextuality and investigates challenging themes of otherness and difference, mainly in terms of sexuality, mental health and social exclusion. Pantglas combines research into a Victorian municipal building project, folklore, witchcraft and family oral history and marshals them to blur the distinction between fact and fiction. The novel has its genesis in Morgan’s family history and it incorporates and preserves the memories of family members that relate to the writer’s great-grandparents and their connections with Llanwddyn. The dam at Lake Efyrnwy was constructed in the 1880s in order to supply water to England, and the completion of the project necessitated abandoning and drowning the village of Llanwddyn. The fate of Llanwddyn is relatively forgotten in the grand narrative of Welsh history: as Morgan recognizes in his Afterword, it is also overshadowed by the more politically charged and overtly nationalist response to the drowning of Tryweryn in 1965. Morgan’s fictionalized narrative conflates the construction of reservoirs at Lake Efyrnwy, Cwm Taf, and Cwm Celyn. Tryweryn, in particular, is a deliberate subconscious presence in Pantglas and in this sense the novel not only commemorates Llanwddyn, but it is also an exploration of Wales’s postcolonial mindset.

In its conflation of the Victorian reservoirs of Lake Efyrnwy and Cwm Taf with the more politically infamous reservoir constructed at Cwm Celyn in the 1960s this novel presents a nuanced and multi-layered narrative that explores Wales’s ever-changing postcolonial mindset and investigates challenging themes of otherness and difference, mainly in terms of sexuality, mental health and social exclusion. While the novel has its genesis in Morgan’s family history, it was crafted following extensive research (that also entailed fieldwork) into a Victorian municipal building project, folklore and witchcraft. As such Pantglas represents considerable academic as well as creative investment.