‘His language is weather-beaten and terse, but even the briefest of these stories describe a world which seems fully realised.’ -The Independent
‘His shard-like prose, with its apparently daring rhythms, belongs directly to some more ancient strain of literature, yet its concerns are identifiably contemporary.’ - Times Literary Supplement
An incident from the Viking period in the Northern Isles of Scotland inspired the title story of this remarkable collection of short stories. Mackay Brown elaborates and transforms it. Here, as in all these 21 stories, his imagination plays upon the past and gives it rich meaning for the present – and indeed universality.
George Mackay Brown was one of the major Scottish literary figures of the twentieth century – a prolific poet and novelist, he took much of his inspiration from the myths and landscape of Orkney, and also from his deep Catholic faith. He was born in Orkney in 1921 and died there in 1996. Following his first book in 1954 he published many more, including plays, novels and poems. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has set much of his work to music. In 1988 he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Golden Bird. In 1994 his Beside the Ocean of Time was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and judged Book of the Year by the Saltire Society.
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