Brexit and Donald Trump have inspired a Dan Brown-esque thriller set at the heart of the Welsh Assembly Government.

Inspired by political upheavals over the past year, author Ifan Morgan Jones asks what would happen in a Donald Trump or Nigel Farage-esque figure lead a populist government at the Welsh Assembly.

Dadeni by south Wales-based author Ifan Morgan Jones is published this week by Y Lolfa. This is his third novel.

‘I’m not sure Welsh literature has really responded to devolution,’ said Ifan, ‘I wanted o change that by writing a political thriller based around Cardiff Bay.’

The novel concerns an archeologist Bleddyn Cadwaladr, and his son Joni Teifi, who ar called in by the Welsh Government to investigate after a theft goes awry.

What they find at the scene of the crime propells them into a race against time to stop a political coup that could change the fate of the country.

Ifan Morgan Jones won the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize for his first novel, Igam Ogam , in 2008. He published his second novel, Yr Argraff Gyntaf , in 2010.

He said that Dadeni also draws upon his ten years working as a journalist covering Welsh Politics.

‘I originally wrote the novel in 2015, but so much happened politically over the last year or so that I felt that I had to re-write parts of it in order to take the new political climate into account,’ explained Ifan.

‘The novel asks where the boundary lies between the kind of nationalism that is acceptable to us in Wales and the nationalism espused by Nigel Farage and Donald Trump’ he said ‘Is it acceptable to use tactics that take advantage of the masses’ emotional, irrational nature in order to ensure constitutional change for utilitarian and rational reasons?’

Dadeni by Ifan Morgan Jones (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.