The best-written Welsh novel of the year
Read the opening pages below
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PRELUDE
East Prussia, 1944
*
Wild geese are rushing through the night,
With shrill cry northwards faring.
Danger awaits! Take care your flight!
The world is full of murder.
Walter Flex, 1916
Storks, in their thousands, prepared to abdicate their high thrones. They peered down from chimney stacks and churches. Raising their heads, the creatures clattered their bills, spread huge wings, rose and soared in circles above the villages of East Prussia.
It was time, it was high time: the birds must abandon Europe without delay. So immemorial wisdom dictated, but with fresh urgency, for the storks could see from their vantage point what the human herd below avoided: Russia surging across the map from east to west. Southwards the flocks prepared to migrate, over the shrinking German Empire, across Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, cruising above the Bosporus to ride the thermals over Egypt, and follow the Nile down to the safety of breeding grounds in Africa.
Everywhere Magdalena Arber wandered, that halcyon summer and early autumn, she came across folk staring upwards, ruminating. You could hear what they did not say: Will you ever return home, beloved creatures? Shall we? In that peaceful season, the lush pastures of East Prussia had never seemed as fruitful. The villagers continued to eat their fill, while Europe famished. Wading through waves of green, Magdalena felt faint earth tremors: the reverberation of a distant earthquake. On the main arteries, a westward trickle of refugees became a denser flow.
Now along the river valleys trekked strange cattle, driven east to west, breeds no one had seen before. In their thousands the animals gathered on the plains. On no account go near them, Magdalena was warned: these beasts are not a herd, you see, they’re unrelated to one another. They’ve reverted and are wild animals now: they’ll take you for an enemy. The cattle stampeded through the land, trod down fences, broke into gardens and stripped bushes and trees.
Uneasy news travelled by word of mouth, east to west. Border towns – Memel, Tilsit, Schirwindt – had been burned and bombed to ash. The rumble of distant artillery troubled your dreams; the eastern horizon glowed blood-red. The Russian front was coming, Stalin was coming! Terrified villagers abandoned their homes to join the flood of migrants…
…only to return and take up where they had left off.
For a deep, somnolent quiet had resumed. False alarm! Everyone exhaled. Our armies must have driven back the Slavs. The Russians are subhuman, everyone agreed, they cannot win against our Aryan might and manhood and technical know-how.
The wild geese took to the air, for their westward migration.
A first thick frost rimed the pastures. No grass remained for the alien cattle to eat, and they starved. They stood still, their stomachs distended, and when the snow fell, so – with a final defeated bellowing – did they.
Magdalena knelt to the child who was not her child, dressing her warmly in double layers of woollens and coats. She packed a rucksack, wrapped the crossbar of her bike in padding, and said, calmly, ‘Dearest love, we need to go. But don’t worry, Magda will look after you.’
More information on the book »
The shortlist for the 2025 Wales Novel of the Year
Earthly Creatures by Stevie Davies (Honno)
Clear by Carys Davies (Granta)
Glass Houses by Francesca Reece (Headline Publishing Group, Tinder Press)
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