Morwyn

First published in 1937, John Cowper Powys originally wanted to call this novel ‘Hell’. One can see why. Powys was a fervent opponent of vivisection, ‘man’s most vicious cruelty’, and here, in this strange fantasy, he gives full vent to his feelings. The main adventures are set in Hell where the narrator, not named but clearly based on Powys himself, his dog, Black Peter, Morwyn, his new love and her father, a vivisector find themselves hurled after a cataclysm on a Welsh mountain-side. The infernal adventures and encounters are virtuoso displays of Powys’s extraordinary knowledge of the mythical underworld.