Sunset Song
Voted ‘The Best Scottish Book of All Time’
Written by Lewis Grassic Gibbon / with Kapka Kassabova / Introduction by Ian Campbell
£9.99
- Paperback
- E-Book
Reviews
Portrayed with a lyrical intensity that echoes through the years and still resonates today
The New York Times
An evocative look at female life on the Scottish frontier . . . Sunset Song is the story of a resilient young woman during the early twentieth century. Her profound identification with the land is her source of renewal and strength as she endures harrowing family circumstances and, eventually, the devastating fallout of the First World War
Los Angeles Times
When I read Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song in my mid-teens I entered into it with such wholehearted love that I longed to live inside it . . . The rhythms of the prose are incantatory, musical . . . Chris is the centre of the novel and its genius, vivid on every page where she's present
The Guardian
An inescapable landmark of Scottish literature . . . Few novels have ever achieved such an unaffectedly sublime blend of poetry and music, and it is clear from the outset that the title is anything but a conceit
Times Literary Supplement
His three great novels have the impetus and music of mountain burns in full spate
Observer
It is gritty and passionate and one of Scotland's great twentieth-century novels
Daily Express
One of the greatest Scottish novels of the twentieth century
The Scotsman
A masterpiece of modernist prose and a landmark in Scottish writing
The Herald
It captures both the endurance of the land and the fragility of human lives upon it
The Independent
A classic novel of love, hardship and survival, written with a poetic intensity that has lost none of its power
BBC Arts
Chris Guthrie is the most passionate and appealing heroine in Scottish literature; Grassic Gibbon's magnificent novel is fresh, powerful and timeless
Anne Donovan
One of literature’s most enduring heroines — as strong as the land she’s bound to
Janice Galloway
Sunset Song's great gripping hybrid of melodrama and realism . . . left me scorched
Ali Smith
You will find it has lost none of its appeal and emotion. And if you are about to read this remarkable novel for the first time, you are embarking on a profound journey
Nicola Sturgeon
About the Book
'Oh, she hated and loved in a breath!'
Faced with the choice between her harsh farming life and the seductive world of books and learning, the spirited Chris Guthrie decides to remain in rural Scotland. But as the devastation of the First World War leaves Chris and her community in tatters, she must draw strength from what she loves – and endure, like the land she loves so intensely.
Powerful and moving, Sunset Song is an inspirational celebration of the human spirit.
The Authors
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell) was one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. Born in Aberdeenshire in 1901, he died at the age of thirty-four. He was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays and science fiction, and his writing reflected 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.
Kapka Kassabova
Kapka Kassabova is the author of Street without a Name (2008), the unsentimental story of a Communist childhood which was shortlisted for the Prix Européen du Livre and the Dolman Travel Book Award. Her essays and articles have appeared in the Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sunday Times, the Scottish Review of Books and on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. Kassabova lives in the Scottish Highlands.
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