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100 Best Scottish Books

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A Concussed History of Scotland - Frank Kuppner (1990)

1 Jan 2005

The kind of exercise in post-modernity that makes traditionalists drop their monocles in disbelief at the self-indulgence of it all, A Concussed History of Scotland earned Kuppner huge critical acclaim but, perhaps understandably, didn’t trouble any…

A Day at the Office - Robert Alan Jamieson (1991)

1 Jan 2005

‘We should be free to wander,’ says the unnamed narrator early on. And that’s exactly what the author goes on to do. Pity the poor typesetter: each page of this book – a precursor to much modern experimental Scottish fiction – looks more like a work of…

A Disaffection - James Kelman (1989)

1 Jan 2005

How Late it Was, How Late may have grabbed the headlines, The Busconductor Hines may have been more seminal, but it is A Disaffection, quietly, which is James Kelman’s best book. Its ‘hero’ (a problematic term; it’s James Kelman we’re talking about) is…

A Sense of Freedom - Jimmy Boyle (1977)

1 Jan 2005

This is one of the most important books ever published about crime and punishment in Britain. A Sense of Freedom is the autobiographical account of how a boy from the Gorbals grew up in the gang culture of the 60s to become 'Scotland's Most Violent…

A Twelvemonth and a Day - Christopher Rush (1985)

1 Jan 2005

A Twelvemonth and a Day is a love song and lament for the vanished 'slow old tuneful times' of life in the fishing villages in the East Neuk of Fife. Rush was born in St Monans, one of the many fishing communities condemned by factory farming methods.

A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay (1920)

1 Jan 2005

One of the greatest flights of fantasy in all of fantastic fiction, David Lindsay's debut is not only a metaphorical flight; it's also a quite literal one. Beginning with a séance in Hampstead and a journey to an observatory in north-east Scotland…

Adam Blair - John Gibson Lockhart (1822)

1 Jan 2005

In a society where church scandals are nothing new, it is hard to imagine the tale of a minister committing adultery causing a great uproar. But in 1822, JG Lockhart’s novel was heavily criticised for its portrayal of a widowed minister who has an…

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume (1748)

1 Jan 2005

Only three years after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops at Culloden, a book was published that shattered the world of philosophy and paved the way for the Scottish Enlightenment. David Hume, then aged 37, recast the opening parts of his…

An Oidhche Mus Do Sheòl Sinn - Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul (2003)

1 Jan 2005

The title of Aonghas Pàdraig’s first full-length novel means ‘The Night Before We Sailed’. Few novels have been published in Scottish Gaelic and many of those that have are aimed at children and school pupils. This makes the author’s achievement in this…

Annals of the Parish - John Galt (1821)

1 Jan 2005

John Galt was born in Irvine, made his name in London, money in Canada, and died and was buried in Greenock in 1839. He was Coleridge’s favourite novelist and a star contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine. In the 1820s, he wrote a series of Scots stories…

Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson (1995)

1 Jan 2005

How many books have you read recently that begin with 25 pages conducted, quite amicably, from inside the womb? This one, told in part through the eyes of unwanted baby Ruby Lennox (conception onwards), and in part through the tragic history of her…

Black and Blue - Ian Rankin (1997)

1 Jan 2005

Ian Rankin is one of this country’s most prolific and commercially successful authors. No writer has chronicled the changing face of Edinburgh so vividly nor in such minute detail. Since 1987’s Knots and Crosses, the investigations of his celebrated…

Born Free - Laura Hird (1999)

1 Jan 2005

Laura Hird's Born Free is a masterpiece of contemporary urban fiction. It is also a quintessentially Scottish book: funny but dark, malevolent but life affirming, poignant but endearingly compulsive. First published in 1999, Born Free followed Hird's…

Brond - Frederic Lindsay (1984)

1 Jan 2005

A political thriller, but a cut above the disposable airport novels of Tom Clancy, Brond throws a serpentine plot of political intrigue into central Scotland. After witnessing the mysterious Brond kill a child in Kelvingrove Park, student Robert is…

Buddha Da - Anne Donovan (2003)

1 Jan 2005

From the opening paragraph of Buddha Da, there is a lyrical beauty about this book. It reminds me of my favourite songs, the ones that take me somewhere special whenever I hear them. So it is with Anne Donovan’s novel. The story of Jimmy, the Glaswegian…

But n Ben A-Go-Go - Matthew Fitt (2000)

1 Jan 2005

Who would have thought that the third millennium would blast off with a sci-fi novel written in Scots? Matthew Fitt’s debut leaves granny’s hieland hame behind and claims the Scots language for writing that is out of this world. Fitt is one of the…

Children of the Dead End - Patrick MacGill (1914)

1 Jan 2005

Patrick MacGill’s autobiographical novel roams from the tenant farms of Ireland and the grinding poverty of Dermod Flynn’s childhood, to the byways and backroads of Scotland and the navvying life. Leaving home at the age of 12 to seek work ‘beyond the…

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas De Quincey (1822)

1 Jan 2005

Thomas De Quincey’s debut is an intense exploration of the liminal, from the evanescing ‘beatific druggist’ and the illuminatus prostitute of Oxford Street to the phantasmagoric godfather of logos revolutionaries such as Baudelaire, Kafka, Woolf…

Consider the Lilies - Iain Crichton Smith (1968)

1 Jan 2005

Iain Crichton Smith was, and is, lovingly acknowledged as one of modern Scotland’s foremost writers, wits and all-round ‘characters’. Generations of readers have grown up holding close to their hearts (and exam cram sheets) one or other of his terse…

Docherty - William McIlvanney (1975)

1 Jan 2005

Docherty is the most brilliant, forceful and yet measured example of William McIlvanney’s desire to ‘give working-class life the vote in the literature of heroism’. The struggles of the eponymous Docherty family in the early decades of the 20th century…

Electric Brae - Andrew Greig (1997)

1 Jan 2005

Throughout the 1990s, when the majority of the emerging Scottish novelists seemed fixated with gritty urban realism, a handful of authors were taking their inspiration from the dramatic landscape of the country's remoter climes. Notable among these was…

Flemington - Violet Jacob (1911)

1 Jan 2005

Flemington is a finely wrought historical adventure written by a poet. It belongs to a Scottish tradition reaching from Scott through Stevenson and John Buchan, who described Flemington as 'the best Scots romantic novel since The Master of Ballantrae'.

For the Love of Willie - Agnes Owens (1998)

1 Jan 2005

It is often remarked that Scottish scribes have a particular proclivity for mining the dark and devilish in their fiction. Agnes Owens' For the Love of Willie displays all the pitch-black humour and acute observation that have characterised her work…

From Russia, With Love - Ian Fleming (1957)

1 Jan 2005

'My name is Bond, James Bond.' There are few characters of the 20th century that can boast the kind of global renown of Ian Fleming's British secret agent. Widely regarded as the best of Fleming's novels (JFK rated it among his top ten favourite books…

Garnethill - Denise Mina (1998)

1 Jan 2005

There was a time when the Glasgow-set detective story meant little more than the adventures of one craggy-faced chief inspector, handy with his fists, the originator of that oft-recited catchphrase: 'There's been a murrrder . . . ' From the late 90s…

Found 100 articles.

Sorted by date / most viewed. Showing 10, 25, 50, 100 per page.