Owen Martell grew up in South Wales and studied at the universities of Aberystwyth and Oxford. He has published two previous novels in Welsh. He won the Wales Book of the Year Award for his first novel and was shortlisted for the same prize with his second novel. This is his first novel written in English.
Superb. * Irish Times * The mood music conjured up is evocative, reflective and muted...Martell's wonderful portrait...is as vivid as it is sympathetic...Lingers in the mind like an elusive, mournful melody. * Daily Mail * A sensitive depiction of an artist in mourning...A delicate and affecting work of fiction...[Martell] writes with elegant precision...Intermission is an impressive English-language debut, a deft and sensitive depiction of a family shadowed by loss. * Financial Times * This fine if elusive novel about a jazz giant echoes his art in both its style and its story-telling...A novel as oblique, elusive but quietly hypnotic as its hero's own playing. -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent * An introspective, original novel...It is hard to write about figures of recent history in a way that feels authentic and true, but Bill Evans is drawn here in all his quirkiness and mutability...This novel stands as a well-written lament. It is a clear-eyed exploration of a jazz intermission, of the forced break in the chaos, and an apt tribute to a music so full of life that even a pause, a silence, can go down howling. -- Esi Edugyan * Guardian *