Ash On a Young Man's Sleeve

By Dannie Abse

Widely acclaimed for its warm humour, lyricism and honesty, as well as its accurate evocation of the thirties, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve has become a sought after classic.

In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backcloth of the times - unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parthian Books
• Release date: Jun 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781908946577

Dannie Abse

Dannie Abse was born in Cardiff in 1923. While still a student his first book of poems was published and his first play performed. Further poetry volumes followed over the decades, culminating in his New & Collected Poems (2003) and Running Late (2006). His first novel, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve appeared in 1954 and his most recent, the Booker long-listed The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds and Dr Glasin (2002). His three prize-winning plays were collected in The View from Row G (1990) and his autobiography, Goodbye, Twentieth Century, was published in 2001. He is president of the Welsh Academi and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews for Ash On a Young Man's Sleeve

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve is an autobiographical account of growing up Welsh and Jewish, in the period leading up to and during the Second World War. Throughout the text there's the rumblings of war, references to Hitler, and references to events that seem so much more important in the Welsh literature of that period than the English writing of the period -- namely, the conflict in Spain.

The narration is compelling -- like the memory, it skips around in time, makes references to things that happened before and after, picks up on a detail and runs with what comes up... It felt like listening to someone who needed to tell a story and take their time to get there, especially once you read the last few pages.

Parts of the narration are beautiful, too. You can tell Dannie Abse is a poet. "Cariad, clean heart, listen to me, this is my beginning..."