The Sunday Telegraph
"Incantatory but down-to-earth, profound and often funny"

Iain Crichton Smith, The Scotsman
"What illuminates and pleases, apart from the speech of his characters and the poetic imagery, is the insight into people"

Book Description
This collection of eleven stories, first published by The Hogarth Press in 1974, demonstrates the full range of George MacKay Brown's literary talent. All of these sharply-etched fables deal with his perennial themes - love, violence, death, and rebirth - and are set in an Orcadian world that spans myth and reality, past and present.

About the Author
George Mackay Brown is one of the major Scottish literary figures of the twentieth century. A prolific poet and novelist, he took much of his inspiration from the myths and landscape of Orkney, and also from his deep Catholic faith. His collection of short stories A Time to Keep (1971) won the Katherine Mansfield Mentor short story prize and his novel Beside the Ocean of Time was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994. He died in 1996.