Republics of the Mind: New and Selected Stories - Softcover

This brand new edition of short stories comprises the best of James Robertson's work, collected together here for the first time. They range in setting from a dysfunctional safari park to a dentist's surgery, from the poverty of hope of a reservation in South Dakota to the nightmare vision of a future Scotland riven by ethnic cleansing, from friendships strong in adversity to marriages heading for the rocks. Nothing is quite what it seems in these stories. Running through them is an undercurrent of optimism tinged with despair, as the personal meets the political and individual men and women make choices that will change their lives forever. Surreal, realistic, angry, philosophical, funny and humane, Robertson's shorter fiction explores the lives of his characters with the same deftness of touch that has brought critical acclaim for novels such as "And the Land Lay Still" and "The Testament of Gideon Mack".

James Robertson is a poet, editor and essayist as well as a writer of fiction. He has published two previous collections of short stories, and four novels, including the award-winning Joseph Knight and And the Land Lay Still, while The Testament of Gideon Mack was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice. He was writer-in-residence at the Scottish Parliament at the time of the new building's opening in 2004, and is a co-founder of and contributing editor to Itchy Coo, the children's imprint specialising in books written in Scots. He stays in Angus.