His Bloody Project

‘The book’s pretence at veracity, as well as being a literary jeux d’esprit, brings an extraordinary historical period into focus, while the multiple unreliable perspectives are designed to keep the audience wondering, throughout the novel and beyond. This is a fiendishly readable tale that richly deserves the wider attention the Booker has brought it.’ * Guardian *
‘[His Bloody Project] isn’t a thriller in any normal sense of the word. It engrosses the reader by means quite different from suspense, and the mysteries it presents are of a kind that can’t be neatly solved…In drawing attention to this riveting, dark and ingeniously constructed novel, the Man Booker judges have done readers hungry for new and serious fiction a tremendous favour.’ * Sunday Times *
‘It’s a riveting historical whydunnit that plants readers among the dirt and injustice of Victorian-era crofting life’ * NZ Listener *
‘Accounts, witness reports, and a trial, all set down as in an authentic case, gradually reveal a truth that is chilling yet inevitable.’ – Jane Sullivan * Australian Book Review, Books of the Year 2016 *
‘I also adored Graeme Macrae Burnet’s maddeningly brilliant His Bloody Project, and found myself utterly absorbed in the 1869 case of Roderick Macrae, accused of murder in a Scottish highland community…A cunning and unreliable tale that still bloody nags at me.’ – Hannah Kent * The Books We Loved 2016, Sydney Morning Herald *
‘A dark, unforgettable picture of the crofter’s life in 19th-century Scotland.’ – James Button * The Books We Loved 2016, Sydney Morning Herald *
‘This is ultimately the book’s great strength—its unwillingness to offer a definitive explanation for its protagonist’s shocking deeds. After hinting at possible motives and offering a basis for a countervailing case of insanity, the book finally gestures towards the impossibility of knowing the forces at play in another person’s mind.’ * Law Institute Journal *
‘Transporting and deliciously frustrating—I loved the way Burnet played with notions of doubt, criminality and justice.’ – Hannah Kent * 2016 Staff Picks, Kill Your Darlings *
‘A retelling of a gory triple murder that’ll indulge your true crime craving.’
‘A remote crofting village in nineteenth-century Scotland, and a shocking and seemingly inexplicable act of murder by a teenage villager. Accounts, witness reports, and a trial, all set down as in an authentic case, gradually reveal a truth that is chilling yet inevitable: the power of a feudal system that supports petty tyrants, stereotypes its criminals, and grinds down its victims.’ – Jane Sullivan * Australian Book Review *
‘A powerful novel…keeps the reader guessing to the end as it examines the legal process as it relates to the class divide of the time.’ * Otago Daily Times *
‘In exploring the duality of good and evil, Burnet is tapping into a rich seam of Scottish literature, from James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, to Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde…His Bloody Project also illustrates what fans know about crime writing: it’s a great way to explore the depths of a society: the tensions that animate it, the structures and hierarchies that underpin it.’ * Metro *

Graeme Macrae Burnet was born and brought up in Kilmarnock and now lives in Glasgow, Scotland. In between, he lived in Prague, Bordeaux, Porto and London. His debut novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, is a psychological crime thriller set in the small town of Saint-Louis on the French–Swiss border. His second book, His Bloody Project, which deals with a triple murder in a crofting village in the Scottish Highlands, has been longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.

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