The Warlock of Strathearn

A coded manuscript, obscure in origin and procured in unusual circumstances, provides an engaging project for retired schoolmaster Archibald MacCaspin. Cranky in person and pedantic in his own prose, Archibald's translation of the first person narrative reveals a very different voice...

In the 1640s, in a Perthshire valley, a servant girl is delivered of a child with astonishing powers. He can talk to animals, inflict sores, heal illnesses and see the dead. Following a childhood and adolescence filled with the sights, smells and sounds of one of the loveliest stretches of Scotland's countryside, his story moves to Edinburgh, and as far afield as the forests of Southern Bohemia, before bringing him home to the rowan wood at Culteuchar. He describes a relentless struggle with his grandmother and her malevolent spirit, a conflict only resolved in a final confrontation as vivid and violent as any horror movie. But the warlock's greatest feat is reserved for the woman he loves and loses, who meets her death with dignity on the scaffold.

The more disquieting elements in the magical realism of Christopher Whyte's first novel Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin here move to centre stage, in a fantastic narrative which frames a psychodrama of prejudice and misunderstanding, of love and loss, of family hatred, revenge and, finally, salvation.