![]() Neglected at first, this brilliant short novel has climbed in the esteem of readers until it is now regarded as one of the glories of English literature-or, for those who like to subdivide these matters, of Scottish literature. Karl Miller, The Times Literary Supplement ![]() The novel splits and doubles itself, its themes, and its characters: two texts, one following the other, are written from two different points of view narrating the same terrible story, they contradict each other here and there, forming an asymmetrical diptych, all the more compelling for its discordancy and conflicts.Ī work so moving, so funny, so impassioned, so exact and so mysterious, that its emergence from a long history of neglect came as a surprise which has yet to lose its resonance. James Hogg's great novel is set in eighteenth-century Edinburgh, a city of night and shadow, of lurking eavesdroppers and invisible pursuers, of gloomy wynds and crepuscular crannies. It has been an influence on Scottish literature and certainly on my own Inspector Rebus stories.Very little is what it seems in this complex novel.A psychological horror story, this also works as a novel of stalking, grooming, and serial killing. ![]() This book has been haunting me since student days. Though a bit more obscure than the classics I usually discuss here, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg is an iconic work of Scottish Gothic that mixes elements of religious and political satire with truly harrowing depictions of demonic forces. ![]()
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