Promotional Information

A wonderful historical novel which is now considered to be a modern classic Iain Crichton Smith won a number of literary prizes, awards and fellowships, as well as the Queen's Jubilee Medal. He was awarded an OBE in 1980 'Shows us isolation, perplexity, loneliness, a combination of blindness and indifference' New Statesman 'He has given those bitter days of eviction a burning immediacy' John Prebble 'A profoundly human document, with a message for our own and future times' Martin Seymour Smith 'A masterpiece of simplicity' Financial Times 'Mr Crichton Smith's touching tale remains a timeless comment on officialdom' Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Iain Crichton Smith was a prolific author in both English and Scottish Gaelic. He is known for poetry, short stories and novels. He died in 1998.

Reviews

Iain Crichton Smith was, and is, lovingly acknowledged as one of modern Scotland's foremost writers ... Reading Iain Crichton Smith - like the author's own compulsion to write - is a hungry addiction ... The book posits, with absolute subtlety, the need for a compassionate, rather than a dogmatic, understanding of human needs: a message that is surely as important now as it ever was.
*The List*

A simple but noble book ... this deserves to be read
*The Scotsman*

Crichton Smith has an acute feeling for places and atmosphere. The wind-blown heaths, the grey skies, the black dwellings, the narrow lives, the poverty - are all vividly depicted ... one can linger over the sheer beauty of his phrases
*Observer*

Restrained, finely wrought ... Crichton Smith shows us isolation, perplexity, loneliness, a combination of blindness and indifference
*New Statesman*

A masterpiece of simplicity
*FINANCIAL TIMES*

A profoundly human document, with a message for our own and future times
*Martin Seymour Smith*