Reviews
George Mackay Brown is one of the masters of the short story form'
Ali Smith
About the Book
"The Island of the Women" is George Mackay Brown's posthumously published collection of short stories, released in 1998, two years after the author's death. Like his previous collections, "A Time to Keep" and "A Calendar of Love", this volume explores Brown's concerns with history, spirituality, legend and storytelling. In the title story, Brown uses the famous Orcadian myth of the selkie, the seal-man. The story "Poet and Prince: A Fable", explores the role of the writer in society, a tale which begins in an unknown European state and concludes on Brown's beloved island.
The Author
George Mackay Brown
George Mackay Brown (1921–96) was one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished and original writers. His lifelong inspiration and birthplace, Stromness in Orkney, moulded his view of the world, though he studied in Edinburgh and later at Newbattle Abbey College. In 1941 he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis and lived an increasingly reclusive life in Stromness, but he produced a regular stream of publications from 1954 onwards. These included A Calendar of Love (1967), A Time to Keep (1969), Greenvoe (1972), Hawkfall (1974), and, notably, the novel Beside the Ocean of Time (1994), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Saltire Book of the Year.Related
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Paperback | Pub: 22 Sep 2016£9.99Taking a job in the studio of an Edinburgh taxidermist probably isn’t Walt’s wisest decision. Suffering from combat stress and struggling to outrun the demons from his past, he now finds himself confronted by the undead on a daily basis....
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Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99First published in 1973 by the Hogarth Press, Magnus is George Mackay Brown’s tour de force – his most poetic and innovative book. He links the twelfth-century story of the saintly Earl Magnus of Orkney’s brutal murder at the hands of his...
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Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99These two long stories are set, like most of George Mackay Brown’s work, in Orkney and in a period, the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the pattern of island life, little changed since Viking times, was beginning to be threatened. The...
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Paperback | Pub: 19 Sep 2016£8.99
Paul Leibovitz is 53, living in Hong Kong, deeply in love with the city, its culture, and most of all, Christine. When a fortune teller predicts the death of someone she loves, however, the pair are once again thrust into the murky criminal world of...
