The face on the poster tells a story without a word being spoken: a woman’s face etched with grief, defiance in the downturn of the mouth.Theatre-goers are left in no doubt that the Dundee Rep Ensemble’s performance of Euripides’ anti-war tragedy Hecuba is going to be bleak and uncompromising; a narrative with no quarter given. Read More
The tenth novel by Glaswegian crime writer Denise Mina, and the third to involve DS Alex Morrow. Gods and Beasts delivers a tale of moral corruption, murder and complicity which explores the connections between the worlds of politics, the police force and the criminal underworld. This novel is one overtly concerned with the institutional mesh Read More
As a university lecturer whose research and teaching examine the philosophical relevance of religion, I have been struck by the way in which critical discussion often reduces religious discourse to issues of psychology, science or morality. To interpret the relevance of religious scripture through these disciplines is tantamount to saying that religion is merely a Read More
Night Boat, Alan Spence’s sixth novel, is a fictional “autobiography” of the life and teachings of Hakuin, an 18th-century Japanese Zen Buddhist master. It opens with Hakuin as a young boy, listening to a sermon about the Eight Burning Hells: The hells, the monk explained, descended in order of severity, down and down, ever deeper Read More
Y is a debut novel by Canadian author Majorie Celona, who was previously a writing fellow at Colgate University and was writer in residence at Hawthornden Castle, near Edinburgh. She has published short stories in The Best American Non-required Reading, Harvard Review and Crazyhorse, amongst other collections. The novel is set on Vancouver Island, where Read More
How does one bear truthful witness to a real tragedy in an age that is all too aware that truth is not divorced from the telling of stories? Or write a fictional narrative that must remain true to itself as fiction but which does not falsify the real? Instead of seeking the “truth” of the Read More
The Stars Inside, Ayala Kingsley’s debut collection, is a delight. Knowing that her poetry had already appeared in several publications such as The Oxford Magazine and had won several awards, including the Troubadour Poetry Prize, I approached this work with high expectations. I was not disappointed, and had the joy of discovering another poet I Read More
This is a beautiful book of poetry in Sheltandic Scots (or Sandness dialect, to be precise), with English prose translations and commentary, and accompanying black and white photographs of Shetland land- and seascapes. As Jamieson explains in his introductory note, he has developed his own orthography to capture the particular dialect, with its own dipthongs Read More
On September 9th this year, Scotland commemorated the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Flodden. It is thought that King James IV declared war on England as a way of diverting his brother-in-law Henry VIII from military action in France. In honouring the “Auld Alliance”, James was responsible for the bloodiest battle in Scottish history. Read More
This latest collection from the engaging and accessible Fleur Adcock is an accessible and engaging collection of poems which her followers will recognise as being in her distinctively personal and colourful style. The best starting point for people new to Adcock’s work is her collected Poems 1960-2000, also published by Bloodaxe, but this book serves Read More