Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Chris Guthrie, torn between her love of the land and her desire to escape the narrow horizons of a peasant culture, is the thread that links these three works. In them, Gibbon interweaves the personal joys and sorrows of Chris' life with the greater historical and political events of the time. Sunset Song, the first and most celebrated book of the trilogy, covers the early years of the twentieth century, including the First World War. Chris survives, with her son Ewan, but the tragedy has struck and her wild spirit is subdued. In Cloud Howe, as the minister's wife, Chris learns to love again, and we witness the cruel gossip and high comedy of small village life until, once again, Chris suffers a terrible loss. Grey Granite focuses on her son Ewan and his passionate involvement with justice for the common man. For Chris, with her intuitive strength, nothing lasts - only the land endures.

The original landmark novel of the slave revolt against the Romans in 73BC, led by the gladiator Spartacus. Heralded as one of the great historical novels of the twentieth century--and an inspiration to generations of people who have fought against oppression and exploitation--SPARTACUS is a masterpiece of vivid storytelling from one of Scotland's finest writers.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITHYoung Chris Guthrie lives a brutal life in the harsh landscape of northern Scotland, torn between her passion for the land, duty to her family and her love of books. When her mother, broken by repeated childbirths, takes her own life and poisons her two youngest children, Chris is left with her father to run the farm on her own. Soon she is alone, and for the first time can choose how to spend her life. But as the First World War begins, everything changes, and the young men leave Scotland for battle. The first in Gibbon's classic trilogy A Scot's Quair, Sunset Song is infused with local vernacular, and innovatively blends Scots and English in an intense description of Scottish life in the early twentieth century.

A Scots Quair is revolutionary - innovative in its form, deft and humorous in its use of the Scots language, courageous in its characterisation and politics. Central to the trilogy is Chris Guthrie, one of the most remarkable female characters in modern literature. In Sunset song, Gibbon's finest achievement, the reader follows Chris through her girlhood in a tight-knit Scottish farming community: the seasons, the weddings, the funerals, the grind of work, the gossip. As the Great War takes its toll, machines repalce the old way of life. Cloud Howe and Grey Granite take Chris from her rural homeland to life in an industrial Scotland and the desperate years of the Depression. The triology as a whole is a major achievment, a picture of society undergoing traumatic and far-reaching transformation. Always readable, never sentimental, A Scots Quair is one of the most important works of Scottish literature.

Faced with the choice between her harsh farming life and the seductive but distant world of books and learning, the spirited Chris Guthrie decides to remain in her rural community. But as the devastation of the First World War leaves her life-and community-in tatters, she must draw strength from what she loves and endure, like the land she loves so intensely. Brutal and beautiful, passionate and powerful, Sunset Song is a moving portrait of a declining way of life and an inspirational celebration of the human spirit. And in Chris Guthrie, Grassic Gibbon has given us one of literature's most unforgettable heroines.

A classic of Scots literature, brilliantly adapted for the stage. Sunset Song is the first novel in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy, a rich evocation of growing up on a farm in Scotland in the early-20th century, of being in love and in lust, of getting by as a young mother on your own and of losing your lover in war. The distinguishing feature of the books - and of this dramatisation - is the use of the rhythms and vocabulary of Scots to tell the story. This stage version of Sunset Song by Alastair Cording was first performed at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, in 1991. 'Succeeds marvellously... puts Scotland's own history onto the stage with vigour, precision and skill... a pure piece of theatre' Guardian 'Does full justice to Grassic Gibbon... a joy and a wrench to watch its blithe unfolding of tragedy and hope' Scotland on Sunday