The international-bestselling winner of the National Book Award and the basis for the Academy Award–winning film directed by John Ford. Huw Morgan remembers the days when his home valley was prosperous, verdant, and beautiful—before the mines came to town. The youngest son of a respectable mining family in South Wales, he is now the only one left in the valley, and his reminiscences tell the story of a family and a town both defined and ruined by the mines. Huw’s story is both joyful and heartrending—a portrait of a place and a people existing now only in memory. Full of memorable characters, richly crafted language, and surprising humor, How Green Was My Valley is the first of four books chronicling Huw’s life, including the sequels Up into the Singing Mountain, Down Where the Moon is Small, and Green, Green My Valley Now. “The reader emerges from these tense pages strangely aglow with sharing the happiness of the characters . . . The simplicity of the language and its delicately strange flavor give the book added charm.” —Chicago Tribune

この作品は、失われゆくエデンの園への痛切な挽歌です。産業化に呑まれる前のウェールズの瑞々しい生命力と、過酷な労働の中にある人間の尊厳を、詩情豊かな文体で描き切った点に文学的真髄があります。言葉の一つひとつが音楽のように響き、読者の魂に深く語りかけてくるのです。 ジョン・フォード監督による映画版は視覚的な叙情美で有名ですが、原作にはテキストでしか到達し得ない心理的深淵があります。映像が静謐な美を強調する一方、小説は記憶を通じて時代の痛みや生々しい葛藤を浮き彫りにします。両者を味わうことで、心の中の「緑の谷」は永遠の輝きを放つ芸術体験へと昇華されるでしょう。