Four Tales

The four tales at long last brought into print again here are the most substantial fruit of John Herdman's mature work of the late 1960s and early 1970s. While they represent both the development and variety of his style and themes, they also exhibit constancies of preoccupation. Herdman's concerns for questions of the will and self-assertion, with individuals acting in defiance of society, for the investigation of personal hubris and the description of identity crisis, are mediated by influences which range from Kafka to Beckett, Bunyan to Joyce, Nietzsche to Stevenson, Rilke to Hogg. In his critical introduction, specially commissioned for this volume, Macdonald Daly argues that the key to understanding Herdman's work is to recognise also the colossal and ubiquitous presence of Dostoyevsky. This makes Herdman that rare creature - one whose writing of Scotland and the Scottish is refracted through the lens of the European tradition.


Genre: Literary Fiction