The Space of Fiction: Voices from Scotland in a Post-Devolution Age

Contemporary Scottish fiction is vigorous, vivid and diverse, eschewing the straitjackets of genre and resisting categorisation as either 'mainstream' or 'literary'. Meanwhile, Scotland itself refuses to conform to external notions of what it is, and what it can become. The literature of this post-devolution nation comes in a multitude of voices. The Space of Fiction examines how Scottish writers have responded to, and been affected by, the nation's ongoing political discourse. Examining in detail the works of Des Dillon, Anne Donovan, Michel Faber, Laura Hird, Alison Miller, Ewan Morrison, James Robertson, Suhayl Saadi, Zoë Strachan and their contemporaries, The Space of Fiction traces their multifarious approaches to a post-national, cosmopolitan, multicultural and even globalised Scotland, and explores their notions of space, of place, and of the nature of identity.

Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon is a professor of contemporary British literature at Aix-Marseille University, France, and specialises in Scottish literature. She has published Alasdair Gray: Marges et effets des miroirs, along with several articles and book chapters on Scottish literature from the 1980s to the present.