Pig Boy — Michael Harvey
ISBN: 9781788649728
£11.99
Cursed with love by his step-mother, Culhwch (Pig Boy) is condemned to love and marry Olwen, the daughter of the Hawthorn Giant — pitiless, violent and huge. So begins the quest – first to the court of King Arthur to wins support for the quest.
In this earliest and earthiest of Arthurian tales, we are in the grip of the Otherworld, where landscape, nature and doing what we can to make a better future, no matter how impossible that might seem, are everything.
Making a future despite the odds and despite the terrible and debilitating pain that afflicts Pig Boy as part of his love of Olwen will see him tested him again and again as he faces each task along the quest, the last to hunt the Great Wild Boar and seize the golden comb and scissors from between its ears so that the Hawthorn Giant can have his beard trimmed and hair combed for his daughter’s wedding.
Will the marriage finally be celebrated? And what help will Pig Boy need to summon – not only from the court of Arthur and its warrior class. but from everyone in the kingdom and from the non-human realm with it deep magic?
An epic tale of ancient myth, the story of Pig Boy continues to resonate today with how we go on making a future, calling on the land and whatever and whoever might help, human and beyond. An ambitious and powerful debut from master storyteller, Michael Harvey.
History, heritage and fun
Read the review of Pig Boy in Buzz Magazine
Author biography
Michael Harvey was born in Glasgow and, by the age of 21, had found himself in Wales where he has been ever since. Michael caught the storytelling bug and has toured to theatres, schools and village halls all over the world. He has won awards for his storytelling performances and enjoys collaborating with musicians, dancers and visual artists.
When lockdown happened Michael had already self-published a book of Welsh folk tales that immediately became an amazon kindle #1 bestseller so he set-to to re-create Culhwch and Olwen, the biggest story in the Mabinogion, as a YA novel (but adults will love it too). And here it is – Pig Boy!
When he’s not writing the mythology of Wales for today’s audience he is walking the land where the stories happened, in the company of friends, weaving their way through the songlines of Wales.