A novel that marks the maturing of a singular British writing talent - and perhaps the most significant writer to come out of Wales in a generation

A quietly overwhelming masterpiece of love, degeneration and the merciless landscape of grief

I treasure Cynan Jones's The Dig for engaging with [a] marginal pastoral tradition, showing the depth of its attachments to nature, and for refusing to treat those attachments in a romantic, nativist way

A powerful book... about violence, loss and the different ways one can be trapped. It is absolutely unflinching in its descriptions of the savagery the badgers face... [yet] the violence is never gratuitous... There is certainly a deliberate gnarled quality to the novel's prose. Its language is slightly askew, forcing the reader to linger... This is a novel with a heft far beyond its size

Jones' novellas, with their carefully chiselled prose and explicit descriptions of archetypal figures, gradually acquire a mythic patina. The Dig is a fine exploration of masculinity, grief and violence. Savour the evolution of this distinctive literary voice.

Jones's sense of place is acute, and his passion for the landscape - for its colours, its creatures, its textures, its scents - is absolutely magnetic

Jones's use of language is frequently stellar... There is no doubt that he is one of the most talented writers in Britain'

Jones addresses you with a poetic directness that owes something to Dylan Thomas... These are sentences that are written not for the eye or the ear but for some deeper sense... Deeply moving, but not sentimental, [this] is a book that will get in your bones, and haunt you

A marvellous novel... There are echoes of Ted Hughes, Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway... It can be read like poetry, letting the words resonate in the skull

Extraordinarily powerful... [Its] necessary and central brutality is more than redeemed by the transcendent quality of Jones's writing... In its marriage of profound lyricism and feeling for place, deep human compassion and unflinching savagery, this brief and beautiful novel is utterly unique

Written with a beautifully blunt simplicity, The Dig is moving, evocative, and utterly compelling

By turns chilling and haunting, The Dig is a visceral indictment of the continuities between the use and abuse of animals, and a meditation on the casual violence of ordinary men

[There] is a series of often dramatic and beautifully drawn set-pieces... [and] when is deep in these physically resonant scenes, Jones can be strikingly effective. He has a wonderful eye... The central story around which The Dig is organised is powerfully immediate'

Tenderness and brutality are folded out together in this chiselled gem of a novel... Jones has a poet's eye for detail but his sentences are pared to the bone

There's something of John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy and the Old Testament to this short, sharp, brutal and bewitching tale... Beauty and barbarity, tenderness and heartlessness are mixed in prose that reads like stark poetry. There's almost too much truth in this unforgettable novel. But great beauty too

The Dig explores its central themes - loss, isolation, nature - through, dry, punch storytelling. Each sentence has been neatly sculpted to develop a rich poetry from the stuff of rural life

Take equal pinches of Hemingway and McCarthy, mix them with a huge spadeful of wild Welsh and wondrous originality, and you get The Dig. It's brave and necessary and relevant in that it steers us into a contemplation of the world's beauties by forcing us to consider their extinction. It is angry and heartbreaking and profoundly moving. Truly, it stirs the soul

With this quietly huge little book Cynan Jones sets a thrilling new standard for our generation, and shows what a transporting device the short novel can be. I read it twice, heart in mouth, and still cannot quite believe how good it is. Extraordinary gifts in craft and art, combined with mesmeric storytelling, create a book which no-one will put down until it is finished, and which leaves the reader in no doubt: here is a real writer, a real star in the ascendant. 'I felt as though I became a better reader, and a better writer, while I was lost in The Dig

It reads like Cormac McCarthy meeting Ted Hughes down a dark country lane... Thoroughly memorable

It took me over completely, the brutality in it and the tenderness. It is wonderful to read writing that's so hard and true about the land, the land as lived in now, and from within, not as observed from without or as some place in the past. We need that. Not one of Jones' plain strong words is wasted, and Wales comes through in the rhythm of the sentences as well as in what they describe

This parable of modern rural life is lyrical but tough, stylish and poetic, and its themes of grief, wonder, and violence have a resonance far beyond the Welsh valleys where the story takes place

The plot is winningly sparse. ... [The first] twenty pages possess a sharp exactitude, like a taut line of barbed wire. The detail of the prose is remarkable

Powerful [and] indelible... [There are] memorable phrases on almost every page

Beautiful

A powerful novel about isolation and loss, written in wonderful pared-down prose

Give me this sparse, tense novella over Hardy any day. ... The book is haunting and moving without ever being sentimental. A beautiful contrast of violent, unrelenting pressure and searing, intimate moments

A short novel that packs the compact force of a lightweight boxer... Jones has hewn an earthy, flinty language... We can only wonder at what this singular voice might create next

Tenderness and brutality are folded together in this chiselled gem of a novel. Jones has a poet's eye for detail

Important and superbly written

Terse and beautiful... The Dig turns words into scalpels then cuts to the quick. Buy it in spades. 10/10

A work of breathtaking scale and ambition... [with] a rare poignancy and profundity'

A perfect novella: excruciatingly brutal and extraordinarily beautiful at the same time

Rich and deeply felt... combines a visceral emotional punch with a beautifully detailed sense of place... Brief yet powerful

Slim but very powerful... Jones ratchets up the tension in this brutal but mesmeric book

A small, beautifully-formed tale of loss set against the brutality of badger baiting... Jones proves that the short novel can be as epic, and stylistically demanding as a long one

Accomplished and compelling... The language of the book is unsentimental and blunt, richly evoking sound and colour and a contrapuntal, nocturnal lack of colour... Extraordinary

Incredibly visceral and astounding

The Dig has stuck with me throughout [the year]... Jones is his own man, making authentically British - Welsh - myths with plenty of horror and muted emotion

[This] strange and dark work of landscape fiction caught my eye - and ear - this year; brutal, regional, stripped back and pumped up

The Dig is forceful in its simplicity, grace and depiction of human cruelty. An outstanding novel

Imagine Cormac McCarthy transposed to Wales. Infuse a hint of Hemingway, a dash of Eugenio Montale and a lick of José Saramago, and you might arrive at Cynan Jones. The Dig remains one of my most uncomfortable reading experiences to date. From the first sentence to the last, the tone is controlled, economical, alarmingly brutal and tender

Those sounding the knell for traditional stories may have a hard time explaining books like Cynan Jones's The Dig, a swift, elegant novella about a farmer, a badger hunter, and the inevitable clash of their opposing lives... a darkly beautiful book... The Bottom Line: The Dig is a short, powerful story that wraps contemporary issues about modern farming in stunning, earthy language

[A] brutal, lyrical, slim novel... while the action of the story is compelling, the real pleasures lie in Jones's language and meditations on grief. In prose that calls to mind both the severity of Cormac McCarthy and the psychological lucidity of John Updike... the focus on the criminal underbelly of agrarian culture poses a refreshing counterpoint to back-to-the-land idealism

Brilliantly evoking the murkier side of the countryside, Jones has a powerful voice as well as a fine touch for atmosphere

CYNAN JONES was born near Aberaeron, Wales in 1975. His previous novels are The Long Dry (winner of a Betty Trask Award in 2007), Everything I Found on the Beach, and the retelling of a Welsh myth Bird, Blood, Snow. In 2013, the chapter 'The Dig' from this novel was shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.