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100 Best Scottish Books

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Toni Davidson - Scar Culture (1999)

Toni Davidson - Scar Culture (1999)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

A challenging and at times deeply disturbing read, Scar Culture is a British One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and a dark, twisted spellbinder of a novel. Concentrating on the case studies of three abused children, you become privy to some of the most…

Margaret Elphinstone - The Sea Road (2000)

Margaret Elphinstone - The Sea Road (2000)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Historical novels are not easy to get right. If they are under-researched, they don't ring true. If they are over-researched, they groan under a burden of detail that the author was delighted to discover but which may have no place in the story, or was…

George Blake - The Shipbuilders (1935)

George Blake - The Shipbuilders (1935)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Much as shipbuilding was the industry upon which Glasgow was built, so The Shipbuilders is one of the twin pillars upon which its literary heritage is constructed. Published in 1935 - the same year as McArthur and Long's No Mean City it gives a humane…

Gordon Williams - The Siege of Trencher's Farm (1969)

Gordon Williams - The Siege of Trencher's Farm (1969)

1 Jan 2005

The Siege of Trencher's Farm achieved notoriety when it was adapted and released as the nasty, brutish Straw Dogs by Sam Peckinpah. The British Board of Film Censors subsequently banned the movie until 2002 because of its graphic violence and a…

Neil M Gunn - The Silver Darlings (1941)

Neil M Gunn - The Silver Darlings (1941)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Like Neil Miller Gunn, I’m the seventh of nine children. I know what it means to be caught between the Broons and the Waltons, part Bairn, part John Boy. Growing up, I knew Gunn was a founding figure in the Scottish Renaissance, but the only books of…

Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

It’s the book everybody thinks they know, but may never have actually read, the iconic Scottish story. One man downs his own slightly unconvincing chemical experiment and becomes two: the good guy and the bad guy. As the bad guy, he wallows in vices and…

John Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)

John Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

'He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me; things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came…

Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse (1927)

Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse (1927)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Virginia Woolf is not a name immediately synonymous with Scottish writing. However, her evocation of the Hebrides as a place in which 'the sea is stretched like silk across the bay' should not be denied a position on the list. Conceived at the height of…

Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting (1993)

Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting (1993)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Much imitated but never bettered, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting is my personal numero uno 20th century Scottish book. This novel is now so embedded in Scottish culture that it’s hard to remember it’s only been around for 11 years. In that time, it’s…

The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway (1989)

Janice Galloway - The Trick is to Keep Breathing (1989)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Janice Galloway’s debut novel made a considerable impact upon its publication. Winner of the MIND Book of the Year/Allen Lane Award, American Academy EM Forster Award plus a SAC book award, the novel was also shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel…

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