The Oatmeal Ark: From the Western Isles to a Promised Sea - Softcover

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Rory MacLean was born in Vancouver and has lived in Toronto, London, Berlin, Italy and the Hebrides. He trained as a screenwriter, but during the premiere of his last feature film his mother fell asleep and his girlfriend ran off with the financier. Not surprisingly, he took a holiday. He returned with the manuscript of ‘Stalin’s Nose’, which won the Yorkshire Post’s Best First Work prize. ‘The most extraordinary debut in travel writing since “In Patagonia”,’ wrote reviewer William Dalrymple.

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'WE MET, MY GREAT-GRANDSON AND I, MORE THAN A CENTURY AFTER MY DEATH…'

The reverend Hector Gillean is a ghost. At the start of the last century he built a ship and sailed west from the Hebrides to search for a promised land in the heart of the Canadian wilderness. Two hundred years later his great-grandson retraces the hopeful voyage from Scotland to nova Scotia, across Canada by water and through three generations of extraordinary family history.

'The Oatmeal Ark' voyages into the deepest places of the heart, exploring love and hope and loss, on a wave-rocked, wind-tossed travel adventure of ghosts and boats. Its story is at once a record of a remarkable pilgrimage, a fantastical narrative and a glimpse at the universal quest for a better world.

'Fizzing with energy and incident… one of the most original and innovative travel books for years.'
ALEXANDER FRATER, 'Observer'

'A fabulous adventure story, wise, witty and never self-indulgent, as if Jack London had – in a fit of absent-mindedness – joined forces with Jane Austen.'
ALBERTO MANGUEL

'Entertaining, lyrical, singing prose; a picaresque adventure'
KALEIDOSCOPE, 'BBC Radio 4'

'Original and fiercely imaginative'
TIM HEALD, 'Literary Review'

'An arresting book, which speaks in a vigorous and original voice'
LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT, 'Sunday Times'