Da Happie Laand

Shortlisted for the Creative Scotland and Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Fiction Award 2011An experimental novel on a grand scale, beautifully carried through. A Perth minister takes in a traumatised stranger who calls himself 'the son and heir to being lost'. When the stranger disappears, the events leading up to and following on from this are revealed. Shifting perspectives from a contemporary mystery to a history of Shetland and emigration, it extends the idea of Scottish empire and diaspora imaginatively, while addressing notions of being and belonging in 21st century Scotland. BACK COVER Hit wis kynda da promised land in mony wyes, da Happie Laand across da sea…In the summer of the year of the Millennium, a barefoot stranger comes to the door of the manse for help. But three days later he disappears without trace, leaving a bundle of papers behind.Da Happie Laand weaves the old minister's attempt to make sense of the mysteries left behind by his 'lost sheep' with an older story relating the fate of a Zetlandic community across the centuries – the tales of those people who emigrated to New Zetland in the South Pacific to build a new life in the promised land, and those who stayed behind. REVIEWS A work of complexity, a novel to be savoured and one that will only get better with age. NEW SHETLANDER Jamieson achieves something quite extraordinary – [he] combines a compelling modern mystery with 500 years of history in a typically experimental style that leaves many of his contemporaries lagging THE LIST Robert Alan Jamieson's strange masterpiece Da Happie Laand haunts dreams and waking hours, as it takes my adopted home of Shetland, twisting it and the archipelago's history into the most disturbing, amazing slyly funny shapes. THE SUNDAY HERALD