as a novelist elis showed a great willingness to try out different forms, including popular ones. cysgod y cryman was followed by a study of intellectual decadence, "ffenestri tua'r gwyll" (windows to the dusk 1955). "yn ôl i leifior" (1956; translated into english as "return to lleifior") was a sequel to "cysgod y cryman" both set at the fictitious farming location lleifior. in 1957, the welsh nationalist party plaid cymru published his time-travel story wythnos yng nghymru fydd (a week in future wales), presenting an independent, utopian wales and a dystopian "western england" in alternative versions of 2033. "blas y cynfyd" (a taste of prehistory 1958) was followed by the colonial satire "tabyrddau'r babongo" (drums of the babongo 1961). he thus pioneered the use of genres unfamiliar to welsh-speaking readers, provided them with a highly readable prose often set in contemporary settings, and did much to establish the position of the novel as a major genre in welsh-language literature. for periods he set out to live off his writing, something hardly attempted before in modern welsh.