* This book may be read with delight the world over. New York Times * Beautifully written novel about a rural Scottish community facing the acute changes wrought by the First World War. While describing a way of life in decline, it also presents a vision of hope for the future via its strong female lead character. Independant on Sunday * It is gritty and passionate and one of Scotland's great 20th-century novels -- Jim Naughtie Daily Express

James Leslie Mitchell, 'Lewis Grassic Gibbon' (1901-35), was born and brought up in the rich farming land of Scotland's North-East Coast. After a brief and unsuccessful journalistic career, he joined the Royal Army Service Corps in 1919, serving in Persia, India and Egypt. Thereafter he spent a further six years as a clerk in the RAF. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925, and became a full-time writer in 1929. The young couple settled in Welwyn Garden City where they lived until the writer's death in 1935. Mitchell published a number of short stories and articles and his first book, Hanno, or the Future of Exploration, appeared in 1928. Seven novels followed under his own name, Stained Radiance (1930); The Thirteenth Disciple (1931); Three Go Back (1932); The Lost Trumpet (1932); Image and Superscription (1933); Spartacus (1933); and Gay Hunter (1934). In the same year Mitchell collaborated with Hugh MacDiarmid to made Scottish Scene, which contained three of Mitchell's best short stories, later collected in A Scots Hairst (1969).