Morris Books, Bethesda, sold out within days of the launch last month, and this week Amazon has just one left on its virtual shelf.

The Real World of One Moonlit Night (Byd Go Iawn Un Nos Ola Leuad) is a fascinating look behind the scenes of a classic Welsh novel.

The original book Un Nos Ola Leuad was written by Caradog Prichard and published in 1961, and was so popular it was translated into a dozen different languages including Hebrew and Greek.

It portrays a Welsh village from the point of view of a young lad growing up in the early part of the 20th Century and is a work of fiction.

But author J Elwyn Hughes had always wondered who the real people were behind the colourful and often disturbing characters in Prichard's original work.

He found most of the people had lived and worked in Bethesda and spent two years researching his new book Byd Go Iawn which has 100,000 words and 200 photos.

He was friendly with Caradog Prichard for many years and said, at times, he felt like a detective working on a "cold case" uncovering the clues that the author had left behind.

"I've been doing a lot of local work about the history in Bethesda and knew some of the people by their pseudonyms," said Mr Hughes, who lives in Bethel near Caernarfon.

"I thought it would be a good idea to write about those people in a who's who," he said.

He was amazed to discover the book's transvestite, madmen, pervert and murderer were actually based on real life characters.

One by one he traced the relatives of characters portrayed in the story and was given photographs of the real people to include in his book.

Elwyn The Book's son Sion, 16, has translated one chapter of the book for relatives of Canon RT Jones who now live in Australia.

"He's translated 7,000 words into English for relatives of the Canon that I found in Bunderburg and Sydney, Australia," said Mr Hughes.

"We will be sending a copy of the book with Sion's translation and a copy of the book."