A Scots Quair is revolutionary - innovative in its form, deft and humorous in its use of the Scots language, courageous in its characterisation and politics. Central to the trilogy is Chris Guthrie, one of the most remarkable female characters in modern literature. In Sunset song, Gibbon's finest achievement, the reader follows Chris through her girlhood in a tight-knit Scottish farming community: the seasons, the weddings, the funerals, the grind of work, the gossip. As the Great War takes its toll, machines repalce the old way of life.

Cloud Howe and Grey Granite take Chris from her rural homeland to life in an industrial Scotland and hte desperate years of the Depression. The triology as a whole is a major achievment, a picture of society undergoing traumatic and far-reaching transformation. Always readable, never sentimental, A Scots Quair is one of the most important works of Scottish literature. 

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'One of the five best Scottish novels of all times'

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'Chris Guthrie is one of the great women of 20th century fiction ... he [Grassic Gibbon] portrays the cataclysmic impact of the war on a generation and their expectations ... Sunset Song is a lament – and a cry of anger, too'

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'Sunset Song is regularly voted Scotland’s favourite book in public polls, is acclaimed across the world, and remains the most evocative work ever written about the Mearns'

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'That flinty Scottish wit – which I experienced first in the books and later recognised when I studied there – flies off the pages in dark sparks'