WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY AMY LIPTROT SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 1994 WINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 1994 'Intimate, humorous, effortlessly combining the strands of history and folklore, the past and the present, this is a deceptively simple book, like a tale told to a child. But its echoes sound on unforgettably. A whole universe is created from a grain of Orkney sand' Independent In this novel set on the fictitious island of Norday in the Orkneys, George Mackay Brown beckons us into the imaginary world of the young Thorfinn Ragnarson, the son of a crofter. In his day-dreams he relives the history of this island people, travelling back in time to join Viking adventurers at the court of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, then accompanying a Falstaffian knight to the battle of Bannockburn. Thorfinn wakes to the twentieth century and a community whose way of life, steeped in legend and tradition, has remained unchanged for centuries. But as the boy grows up - and falls in love with a vivacious and mysterious stranger - the transforming effect of modern civilization brings momentous and irreversible changes to the island. During the Second World War Thorfinn finds himself in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and it is here that he discovers his gifts as a writer. Long afterwards he returns, now a successful novelist, to a deserted and battle-scarred island. Searching for the peace and freedom of mind he had in abundance as a child, he finds instead something he didn't even know he was looking for. George Mackay Brown intertwines myth and reality to create a novel of deceptive simplicity. The story of Thorfinn and the island of Norday is a universal and profound one, rooted in the timeless landscape of the Orkneys, the inspiration of all his writing.

本作の真髄は、時の流れを直線ではなく、すべてが同時に寄せては返す「海」として捉える詩的な世界観にあります。主人公ソフィンの瑞々しい空想力が神話と歴史を往来する姿は、失われゆく土着の記憶を蘇らせる聖なる儀式のようです。ブラウンが紡ぐ言葉は平易でありながら、その深淵にはオークニーの風土が育んだ深遠な哲学が息づいています。 文明の荒波を経て作家として帰郷するソフィンの魂の軌跡は、読む者の心に「本当に守るべきものは何か」を強烈に問いかけます。神話と現実が溶け合う物語の地平で、あなたも自身の内なる聖域を見出すはずです。簡潔な文体の中に全宇宙を内包した、現代文学の至宝と呼ぶにふさわしい名作です。