We are delighted that books by Graeme Macrae Burnet and Janice Galloway have been included by Publishing Scotland’s 50 Books for 50 Years, a list of ‘iconic titles’ supported by Publishing Scotland assembled to ‘celebrate the vibrancy and breadth of Scottish publishing’.
Graeme was selected for HIS BLOODY PROJECT, his Booker Prize-shortlisted novel presenting troublesome and often conflicting accounts of a murder in a Highlands crofting community in the 1860s. The book was published by Publishing Scotland-supported Glaswegian independent Saraband in 2016, and won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award.
Janice’s inclusion was for THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING, ‘a shocking and darkly funny portrait of mental illness, loneliness and waste’ about a woman’s grief in the wake of her married lover’s death. The winner of the Allen Lane/MIND Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book Award, and nominated for numerous others, the book was named one of Scotland’s ten favourite novels by a poll of over 8,000 readers in 2013. First published by Polygon in 1991, the book was re-issued as a Vintage Classic in 2015.
Congratulations Graeme and Janice!
Photo Credit: Euan Anderson
About Graeme Macrae Burnet
Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire and now lives in Glasgow. He has also lived in the Czech Republic, France, Portugal and London.
His first novel, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ADÈLE BEDEAU (Contraband, 2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award. A second Inspector Gorski novel, THE ACCIDENT ON THE A35, was published in 2017, and the trilogy will conclude with A CASE OF MATRICIDE in October 2024.
HIS BLOODY PROJECT (Contraband, 2015) won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and the Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the LA Times Mystery Book of the Year and the European Crime Fiction prize. It has been published in over twenty languages. His latest novel CASE STUDY was published in October 2021 by Saraband (UK), Text (ANZ) and Bolinda (UK audio) to wide critical acclaim. The North American edition was published in November 2022 by Biblioasis. It has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and the Dublin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Ned Kelly International Crime Prize.
Graeme was named Author of the Year in the 2017 Sunday Herald Culture Awards and has appeared at festivals and events in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Russia, Estonia, Macau, Lithuania, Ireland, Germany and France, as well as in the UK.
Praise for HIS BLOODY PROJECT
‘This engrossing novel… is an impressive feat of literary ventriloquism. Around an atrocity in a grim backwater, it opens up vistas into social and geographical divides and conflicting beliefs about criminal responsibility.’ – Peter Kemp, Sunday Times, ‘2016’s Best Books’
‘Graeme Macrae Burnet sucked me in from the very first page with compelling narratives about a triple murder. A series of convincing but unreliable voices circles the central event and left me breathless.’ – Val McDermid, The Guardian, ‘Best Books of 2016’
‘A smart amalgam of legal thriller and literary game that reads as if Umberto Eco has been resurrected in the 19th-century Scottish Highlands.’ – Mark Lawson, The Guardian
Photo Credit: James McNaught
About Janice Galloway
Janice Galloway was born in Ayrshire in 1955. Her first novel, THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING (Vintage), now widely regarded as a contemporary Scottish classic, was published in 1991. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, Scottish First Book, Italia Premio Acerbi and Aer Lingus Awards, and won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year. Her second novel was FOREIGN PARTS (Vintage, 1995), which won the McVitie's Prize. CLARA (Vintage), a fictionalised account of the life of Clara Schumann, was published in 2003 and won the Saltire Book of the Year.
BLOOD and WHERE YOU FIND IT, two collections of short stories, first published in 1991 and 1996 respectively, later became COLLECTED SHORT STORIES (Vintage) in 2009. Janice also wrote two collaborative books of short fiction and poetry with sculptor Anne Bevan, and libretti, poems and a play. Prizes and awards include The American Academy of Arts and Letters EM Forster Award, and the Creative Scotland Award. She has written and presented three radio series for BBC Scotland and has been a guest on several BBC Radio 3 shows.
Janice is the author of two works of 'anti-memoir': THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME (Granta, 2010), was shortlisted for The Biographer's Club First Book and won Scottish non-fiction Book of the Year; ALL MADE UP (Granta, 2011) won the SMIT Book of the Year and a Creative Scotland Award.
Her latest book, JELLYFISH (Granta, 2019), is a short story collection exploring sex and sexuality, parenthood, relationships, the connections between generations, death, ambition and loss.
Praise for THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING
‘I wish everyone would read THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING by Janice Galloway. Galloway writes with an unflinching intimacy in this tale of a woman mourning the death of her married lover.’ – Douglas Stuart (author of SHUGGIE BAIN), New York Times
‘Resembles Tristram Shandy as rewritten by Sylvia Plath.’ – The New York Times
‘A totally authentic portrayal of both the numbness and the frantic overthinking when you’re going through grief. There are lots of unconventional elements – the pages peppered with obsessive lists, different fonts, italicised shards of memory, commercial slogans, trash mag gossip and horoscopes – but it never feels heavy-handed. It brilliantly, agonisingly captures the indifference of a modern world eating up Joy as she struggles to cope with the loss of her partner.’ – Richard Milward, The New Statesman