Product Description

Thorfinn Ragnarson is the daydreaming son of a tenant farmer, avoiding both work and school despite the best efforts of family, friends and neighbours. Instead, the boy dreams up elaborate historical fantasies. In a series of intriguing chapters, George Mackay Brown transforms Thorfinn into a Viking traveller, a freedom-fighter for Bonnie Prince Charlie and the colleague of a Falstaffian knight who participates in the Battle of Bannockburn. He is then hurled into the future as Thor, who returns to the Orkneys as an adult and recalls his internment in a German POW camp, where he discovered his writing skills. Thor also reflects on the history of Orkney, the links between dreaming and writing and the whims of fate. In this beautiful and haunting novel, Brown's lyrical descriptions and gift for local colour capture, as ever, the myth-drenched magic of his native islands.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72300 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 197 pages

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.

Customer Reviews

Each page a gem
This was the first George MacKay Brown book I ever read and since then I have managed to read everything in print by this great, under-rated author. He is one of those incredibly rare talents that could paint a picture with a word, descride a life in a page or the history of a people in a chapter. A true storyteller that brought the story of his people(the orcadians) to the world. This book centres on a young boy growing up on an Orkney island and how he see's his world steeped in myth and legend and coloured with characters from the past and present. The author takes the reader into another world of dreams and passions until the end of the book that comes all too quickly. Read this book and experience the lost art of storytelling.

I do wish I had discovered him sooner...
I have come to George Mackay Brown very late in life and find it rather fascinating that, once a fortnight, I flew over everything he writes of on my way to and from North Sea oil platforms situated north of the Shetlands. I am now too old and infirm to manage to travel to the Orkney Isles which he describes so well, so must content myself with seeking out his works in Amazon's lists. They are well worth the hunt. Anyone with an interest in such things as the sea, small communities, folk, and life in general should take a peek into his books. They are all great volumes to have at the bedside, especially for those interminable insomniac hours: never waste those hours again if you have his books to hand.

spellbinding storytelling by a true bard
A moving tale suffused with magic, poetry and a deep wisdom. From Orkney's greatest Bard, the pages reveal the life of an islander from birth to death, as straighforward and extraordinary as any life.

As with all GMB's work the language is remarkably simple and yet deeply symbolic. Shortlisted for the Booker prize, this work speaks as perfectly and poetically of our green islands as it does of the nature of man and his place in the universe.

This is the work of a truly great poet. Read it!