A comedian, singer, composer, musician, linguist, actor, author and a favourite of Sean Connery and Billy Connolly's, Norman MacLean is a living legend in the Gaelic world.

Based in the Uists in the Outer Hebrides, with side trips to Glasgow, Hamburg and Amsterdam, this dotty adventure embraces frustrated sex, drugs, eightsome reels and a memorable cast of oddball characters: three inept would-be criminals, a demented care-home resident, an ex-communicant of the Free Church of Scotland who moonlights as an enforcer, a pair of Russian weight-lifters who raise ostriches by day and mud-wrestle by night, and a formidable woman lawyer determined to cleanse the island of wrongdoing before HM The Queen arrives on her annual visit.

Something akin to a mad Gaelic version of The Sopranos as directed by the Coen Brothers, this novella is a masterclass of understatement, pitch-perfect dialogue and confident narration.



Born in Glasgow in 1936, Norman Maclean was educated at school and university in Glasgow, before going on to teach all over Scotland. He garnered much fame after winning two Gold Medals at the National Mod - for poetry and singing - in the same year, 1967, the only person ever to do so. Shortly afterwards he began a career, as he would say himself, as a clown, and it is in that role, and that of a musician, that he is still best-known today.



'Perhaps the first Gaelic black comedy'



'Norman is a 24-carat comedy jewel that just keeps sparkling'



'Norman MacLean is the Billy Connolly of the Gaidhealtachd' -