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SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE PRIZE, SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2025

The popular acclaim of James Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935) has risen exponentially in the twenty-first century, and Mitchell's critical standing in European literature is now assured. This is the first full critical biography, authorised by his family, of the author who found enduring fame by his pen-name of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, universally heralded for the plangent autofictional novel Sunset Song and for the epic trilogy of modern Scotland, A Scots Quair.

Dr William Malcolm has drawn on over forty years of dedicated research to lay bare the complex personality of the man behind the legend. Presenting definitive new evidence for every chapter of Mitchell's life, this is a truly fascinating story. Of a child genius born into rural poverty spurred into action as a lifelong political activist. Of rags-to-riches success ground out from the social turbulence of the early decades of the twentieth century. Of the tragedy of a quicksilver talent cut off in his prime, already a leading light of the Modern Scottish Literary Renaissance and of the British section of the anti-fascist Revolutionary Writers of the World. And of a timeless literary legacy secured in Scotland and beyond by a writer summoning the dogged individualism of his peasant ancestry to create one of the most resonant humanitarian voices in modern literature.