Sunset Song

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Nicola Sturgeon (Introduction)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781838851972
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Series:	Canons
Edition description:	Main - Canons
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	765,207
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x (d)

About the Author

Lewis Grassic Gibbon (the pen name of James Leslie Mitchell) was one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. He was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays, and science fiction and his writing reflecs 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Note on the Text xv

Map of Kinraddie xvi

Prelude

The Unfurrowed Field 3

The Song

I Ploughing 29

II Drilling 65

III Seed-Time 107

IV Harvest 178

Epilude

The Unfurrowed Field 239

Notes 257

Glossary 265

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"His three great novels have the impetus and music of mountain burns in full spate."
-The Observer (London)

Editorial Reviews

If this new edition is prompting you to re-read Sunset Song after many years, as I have just done, 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

Chris Guthrie is the most passionate and appealing heroine in Scottish literature; Grassic Gibbon's magnificent novel is fresh, powerful and timeless

ANNE DONOVAN

An unforgettable evocation of a way of life that has slipped away . . . It is a love song for a landscape and language still familiar - and precious - to a generation born long after [Grassic Gibbon] died . . . Chris is one of the great women of 20th-century fiction

Guardian

Sunset Song's great gripping hybrid of melodrama and realism . . . left me scorched

ALI SMITH

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

Guardian - TESSA HADLEY

His three great novels have the impetus and music of mountain burns in full spate.

The Observer (London)

Sunset Song is regularly voted Scotland's favourite book in public polls, is acclaimed across the world, and remains the most evocative work ever written about the Mearns'

Press & Journal

Chris Guthrie is one of the great women of 20th century fiction ... he [Grassic Gibbon] portrays the cataclysmic impact of the war on a generation and their expectations ... Sunset Song is a lament – and a cry of anger, too'

The Guardian - Jim Naughtie

One of the five best Scottish novels of all times'

The Wall Street Journal - Ian Rankin

That flinty Scottish wit – which I experienced first in the books and later recognised when I studied there – flies off the pages in dark sparks'

Independent - Bill Clegg

Sunset Song is my favourite book of all time'

Nicola Sturgeon MSP

I've just re-read Sunset Song, and its great gripping hybrid of melodrama and realism has left me scorched ... Grassic Gibbon's language in the Quair freed me to think language could do anything and everything, could be poetic and realist and dark and soaring and local and strange all at once, with sentences longer than breath; but still all about breathing, or how the heart works'

Ali Smith

The book and their heroine deserve their place in history. There is no better description of the way all these young men from small villages went off to fight in a war, which most of them didn’t understand, and from which so many never returned. That is one of the reasons it carries so much resonance ... he [Grassic Gibbon] was responsible for creating a masterpiece which will live forever'

Vivien Heilbron

It is gritty and passionate and one of Scotland's great 20th-century novels

Daily Express

An evocative look at female life on the Scottish frontier . . . Sunset Song is the story of a resilient young woman during the early 20th 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

His three great novels have the impetus and music of mountain burns in full spate

Observer

A British literary classic

New York Times

"For more than seventy years Sunset Song’s readers have passionately loved this unflinching yearn of a book and its evocation of adolescence and coming of age. Its loamy sensuality and its heightened language evoke a rare kind of reader intoxication." —Ali Smith

From the Publisher

An evocative look at female life on the Scottish frontier . . . Sunset Song is the story of a resilient young woman during the early 20th 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

It is gritty and passionate and one of Scotland's great 20th-century novels

Daily Express