A Dylan Odyssey: 15 Literary Trail Maps is a must-read for any Dylan Thomas fan, and if you are travelling to Wales, use it as a guide. Fifteen Welsh writers, artists and family members chronologically follow the footsteps of the great poet complete with pictures, maps, essays and poems. A hybrid between biography and guide-book, published by Literature Wales, for the Thomas centenary, the book travels from Swansea, his birth town (1914), to Greenwich Village where he drank “18 straight whiskies” at the White Horse Tavern and died at age 39 in St. Vincent’s Hospital.

“Dylan Thomas was the superb master of the Houdini approach to achieving freedom within the straight-jacket of his self-made forms.”

Peter Thabit Jones

Including 15 literary tour maps and essays, plus numerous photographs and home and family members and favourite drinking hole, “A Dylan Odyssey” gives the reader a concise yet visual mini-biography of the great poet and his love of place. Compiled by Literature Wales with an introduction from Thomas’ grand-daughter, Hannah Ellis, private insights slip hand in hand with academic arguments over the hills and dales of Wales, traipsing through London and Oxford during the Second World War to a pre-mature death in Greenwich Village, New York City. The maps are colourful and artistic and the essays are informative. Both notice Thomas reader and poetic scholar can revel in the personal and poetic details. A combination of biographic-gossip and deep insight of how place influences art can be found on each page.

If Wales is on your bucket list, take this book. If you want to introduce a friend or family member to the works of this great poet, give them A Dylan Odyssey: 15 Literary Trail Maps and a copy of The Collected Poems and a recording of Under MilkWood and the poetic seed will be planted forever.

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