Island of Lightning is the latest collection of travel writing by author, cultural commentator and environmentalist Robert Minhinnick, following the award-winning To Babel and Back (2005). In 23 essays Robert travels to Malta (the island of lightning), China, USA, Argentina, Iraq, Finland, Italy, Croatia, Lithuania and Brittany. All the while he is constantly returning to his native Wales, including a walk through Welsh history and culture from Cardiff to the Rhondda valleys.
Other topics broached along the way range from rugby union to poets playing football; the Argentinian writer Alfonsina Storni and her love for Borges to the annual Elvis convention in Porthcawl; the body of a saint to the definition of cool.
Robert Minhinnick is a prize-winning poet and novelist. He was shortlisted for the £30,000 Sunday Times Short Story Award in 2012. He has twice won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem (1999, 2003); his New Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in 2012. His novel Sea Holly was shortlisted for the 2008 Ondaatje Prize, and his essay collections Watching the Fire-Eater and To Babel and Back both won Wales Book of the Year, and were followed by The Keys of Babylon. He lives in Porthcawl in south Wales.