Bill Duncan – författare

A collection of essays and aphorisms about Scottish Calvinism. This is Scottish literary humour at its finest.'A work of contemporary shamanism, with all the bluff, poetry, deranged humour, sleight-of-hand and real magic that implies.' Don Paterson. This is the first (and maybe the last) self-help guide that promises to make you feel a lot worse after you read it. A hilarious satire on freeze-dried mysticism and off-the-shelf enlightenment, it is also a haunting and lyrical reflection on places, voices and memories -- a literary journey into the heart of North-East darkness. 'A perfect evocation of Scotland's mysterious love affair with loss and sorrow. A powerful dram of Zen Calvinism.' Richard Holloway

From the enclosed, austere fishing community of Broughty Ferry to the implacably encroaching tower-blocks of nearby Dundee, Bill Duncan's narrative resonates with the voices of the living and the dead. Haunting, evocative and eccentric, THE SMILING SCHOOL FOR CALVINISTS memorably conjures up a traditional community reluctantly confronting the modern world.