The Island of the Women is George Mackay Brown’s posthumously published collection of short stories, released in1998, two years after the author’s death. Like his previous collections, A Time to Keep and A Calendar of Love, this volume explores Brown’s concerns with history, spirituality, legend and storytelling.

In the title story, Brown uses the famous Orcadian myth of the selkie, the seal-man. The story ‘Poet and Prince: A Fable’, explores the role of the writer in society, a tale which begins in an unknown European state and concludes on Brown’s beloved island.


‘George Mackay Brown is one of the masters of the short story form.’
– Ali Smith

ISBN No:   1904598900 
Publisher: Polygon

Retail price: £6.99   Paperback

A Calendar of Love is George Mackay Brown's first collection of short stories set in Orkney.

In this, George Mackay Brown’s first collection of short stories, the themes he would develop over his career are set out – an obsession with his home Orkney, its dark and violent Viking past, the cycle of the seasons, and the struggle of its inhabitants. The characters of these stories – the fishermen, the crofters, the farmers and the wild tinkers – are all struggling to live their lives and find their identities in a harsh habitat and a cruel age. The stories in this collection share the same melancholy tone and sense of the ceaseless renewal made possible by the natural cycle.


‘The simple beauty of Mackay Brown’s language, which is sensitive, meditated and achieved, is not an adornment: for all the pleasure it affords of itself it is also an exact measure of the writer’s sense of the beauty of the scene ... Mackay Brown ranges easily over the centuries.’
SUNDAY TIMES

‘George Mackay Brown is a poet, whose stories in A Calendar of Love are all set on Orkney. They move about easily in time taking in Vikings, witches, heretics, sailors and drunks. They are strange and fierce and quietly truthful.’
DAILY TELEGRAPH

ISBN No:   1904598730 
Publisher: Polygon

Retail price: £6.99   Paperback

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2006

Winter Tales is George Mackay Brown's collection of short stories set on Orkney.

A superb collection of stories, focusing on light and darkness, winter and its festivals, by one of the greatest story-tellers of the twentieth century. Through a variety of characters from shipwrecked Scandinavians to an Edinburgh gentleman George Mackay Brown looks at the impact of new ways of thinking on the traditional way of life of Orkney.

‘George Mackay Brown’s Winter Tales is an enchanting, tender and robust collection of stories steeped in the ancient rhythms and customs of rural life.’
VOGUE

‘The burnished beauty of his natural descriptions is that of a spellbinding spinner of tales, making his a worthy addition to the trove he would preserve.’
SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

‘In this collection the author is at his celebratory and affirmative best. Everything he writes about is rooted in the harsh Orkney landscape, yet is often heart-achingly tender and compassionate.’
YORKSHIRE POST


ISBN No:   1904598870 
Publisher: Polygon

Retail price: £6.99   Paperback

Beside the Ocean of Time.
Thorfinn Ragnarson is the daydreaming son of a tenant farmer, avoiding both work and school despite the best efforts of family, friends and neighbours. Instead, the boy dreams up elaborate historical fantasies.  

In a series of intriguing chapters, George Mackay Brown transforms Thorfinn into a Viking traveller, a freedom-fighter for Bonnie Prince Charlie and the colleague of a Falstaffian knight who participates in the Battle of Bannockburn. He is then hurled into the future as Thor, who returns to the Orkneys as an adult and recalls his internment in a German POW camp, where he discovered his writing skills. Thor also reflects on the history of Orkney, the links between dreaming and writing and the whims of fate. In this beautiful and haunting novel, Brown’s lyrical descriptions and gift for local colour capture, as ever, the myth-drenched magic of his native islands.  

'moving passages and fine, delicate prose...lyrical descriptions and gift for local colour capture the flavour of the Orkneys' – Publishers' Weekly

 ISBN 1904598293

Retail price: £6.99   Paperback

This collection of eleven stories, first published by the Hogarth Press in 1974, demonstrates the full range of George MacKay Brown's literary talent.  

All of these sharply-etched fables deal with his perennial themes ­ love, violence, death and rebirth ­ and are set in an Orcadian world that spans myth and reality, past and present.

'Incantatory but down-to-earth, profound and often funny'
­ Sunday Telegraph

'At his best, Brown is Brown is a prose Hopkins, concerned with inscape, landscape turned inside-out, the rhythms informing the shape of things we see'
­ Robert Nye, The Guardian

'what illuminates and pleases, apart from the speech of his characters and the poetic imagery, is the insight into people'
- Iain Crichton Smith, The Scotsman

Retail price: £6.99   Paperback

Vinland , George Mackay Brown’s fourth novel, follows the turbulent life of Ranald Sigmundson, a young boy born into the Dark Ages, when Orkney was torn between its Viking past and its Christian future.

This book takes the reader on a journey from Orkney, over to Norway , into Iceland and Ireland , recreating with historical accuracy the customs and landscapes of the time while bringing the age to life through a large cast of engaging characters. Through the telling of Ranald’s story, Mackay Brown displays abundant knowledge about many facets of early Orkney life, of seamanship, marriage customs, beliefs and traditions and his portrayal of this age extends to the routine of the Norwegian Royal court. Traditional poetry is scattered throughout Mackay Brown’s prose adding a richness and depth to the tale he tells.

Lore and legend, the elemental pull of the sea and the land, the sweetness of the early religion and the darker, more ancient rites, weave through this exquisite celebration of Orcadian history and the inexorable seasons of life.

‘Tae descrieve Vinland as a historical novelle disna cam onywhaur near daein it justice: mebbe a historical novelle wi ae ee oan eternity. In this pairt saga, pairt sang, his (Brown’s) unco vision lows through the hameart syntax like a benediction,’
- Lallans

'To describe Vinland as a historical novel does not come anywhere near doing it justice: perhaps a historical novel with one eye on eternity. In this part saga, part song, his (Brown’s) huge vision flows through the unadorned language like a benediction,'
- Lallans

Retail price: £6.99   Paperback