Sunset Song

Divided between her love of the land and the brutal harshness of farming life, young Chris Guthrie finally chooses to stay in the rural community of her childhood.

Yet the First World War and the economic and social changes that follow makes her a widow and mocks the efforts of her youth. But although the days of the small crofter are over, Chris symbolises an intuitive strength which, like the land itself, endures despite everything.

Sunset Song is the first and most celebrated book of Grassic Gibbon’s great trilogy, A Scots Quair. It provides a powerful description of life in the first two decades of the century through the evocation of change and the lyrical intensity of its prose. It is hard to think of any other Scottish novel this century which has received wider acclaim and better epitomised the feelings of a nation.