And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson

This time his subject is Scotland, from 1950 to the present day.

Nor does he show any sign of forsaking the big issues in his new novel, And The Land Lay Still. His tale of an embittered Church of Scotland minister confronted by the reality of evil was exceptional not just because it asked such huge questions of itself and then answered them so successfully, but because in writing it at all Robertson was taking a direct swipe at one of Scotland's key texts, James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. His first novel, The Fanatic, dealt with the Covenanters the second, Joseph Knight, took on the slave trade and his third, The Testament of Gideon Mack, gave Satan himself a starring role. His subject is Scotland, always Scotland, but his theme is faith – faith in a God, faith in a country, faith in a person or a principle.

Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh into Scots.N o one is ever going to accuse James Robertson of a lack of ambition. For Itchy Coo he has translated Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr Fox and A.A. His novel The Testament of Gideon Mack was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2006 and featured on the Richard and Judy Book Club in 2007. He writes books for both adults and children, in English and in Scots. James Robertson is a co-founder of Itchy Coo. Surreal, realistic, angry, philosophical, funny and humane, Robertson's shorter fiction explores the lives of his characters with the same deftness of touch that has brought critical acclaim for novels such as And the Land Lay Still and The Testament of Gideon Mack. Running through them is an undercurrent of optimism tinged with despair, as the personal meets the political and individual men and women make choices that will change their lives forever. Nothing is quite what it seems in these stories. They range in setting from a dysfunctional safari park to a dentist's surgery, from the poverty of hope of a reservation in South Dakota to the nightmare vision of a future Scotland riven by ethnic cleansing, from friendships strong in adversity to marriages heading for the rocks. This brand new edition of short stories comprises the best of James Robertson's work, collected together here for the first time.

And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson