This article develops an ethical reading of the work of Caradoc Evans focusing on My People and
Taffy. My aim is to show that an ethical reading which assumes a microcosmopolitan perspective
can show that the ‘Caradoc Affair’, the outrage with which Evans’s early work was received in
Wales, arose from a misreading of My People. The ‘Caradoc Affair’ then acquired a life of its own
and was at least partly determined by the commercial interests of the daily press, particularly the The
Western Mail. Moreover, an ethical reading can show why Evans’s texts ultimately fail to engage
with the Wales of his time in a meaningful way despite the great impact he had on generations of
Welsh writers that followed, most notably on Dylan Thomas.