Sunset Song

Sunset Song is my favourite book of all time' Nicola Sturgeon MSP, First Minister of Scotland One of the five best Scottish novels of all times' Ian Rankin, The Wall Street Journal I've just re-read Sunset Song, and its great gripping hybrid of melodrama and realism has left me scorched ... Grassic Gibbon's language in the Quair freed me to think language could do anything and everything, could be poetic and realist and dark and soaring and local and strange all at once, with sentences longer than breath; but still all about breathing, or how the heart works' Ali Smith The book and their heroine deserve their place in history. There is no better description of the way all these young men from small villages went off to fight in a war, which most of them didn’t understand, and from which so many never returned. That is one of the reasons it carries so much resonance ... he [Grassic Gibbon] was responsible for creating a masterpiece which will live forever' Vivien Heilbron Chris Guthrie is one of the great women of 20th century fiction ... he [Grassic Gibbon] portrays the cataclysmic impact of the war on a generation and their expectations ... Sunset Song is a lament – and a cry of anger, too' Jim Naughtie, The Guardian Sunset Song is regularly voted Scotland's favourite book in public polls, is acclaimed across the world, and remains the most evocative work ever written about the Mearns' Press & Journal That flinty Scottish wit – which I experienced first in the books and later recognised when I studied there – flies off the pages in dark sparks' Bill Clegg, Independent Lewis Grassic Gibbon (the pen name of James Leslie Mitchell) was one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. He was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays, and science fiction and his writing reflecs his wide interest in religion, archaeology, history, politics and science. The Mearns trilogy, A Scots Quair, is his most renowned work, and has become a landmark in Scottish literature.