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Muckle Flugga

Michael Pedersen

Life on a remote island is turned upside down by a stranger’s arrival, testing bonds of family and tradition and leaving a young dreamer’s future hanging in the balance.

£16.99
Format
Hardback
ISBN
9780571387724
Date Published
22.05.2025
Delivery
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Summary

‘A quirky and original debut that sizzles with scintillating prose.’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO
‘Michael Pedersen is a rare writer of real passion and power and this debut is phenomenal.’ MATT HAIG

Life on a remote island is turned upside down by a stranger’s arrival, testing bonds of family and tradition and leaving a young dreamer’s future hanging in the balance.

It’s no ordinary existence on the rugged isle of Muckle Flugga. The elements run riot and the very rocks that shape the place begin to shift under their influence. The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and the occasional lodger to keep the wolf from the door.

When one of those lodgers – Firth, a chaotic writer – arrives from Edinburgh, the limits of the world the keeper and his son cling to begin to crumble. A tug of war ensues between Firth and the lighthouse keeper for Ouse’s affections – and his future. As old and new ways collide, and life-changing decisions loom, what will the tides leave standing in their wake?

Critic Reviews

A lyrical, windswept novel of a lighthouse keeper and his son that is both small and big in all the good ways. A story about place, about family, about love, the forces of change and so much more. You can feel the energy and life in every sentence. Michael Pedersen is a rare writer of real passion and power and this debut is phenomenal.

Matt Haig
Critic Reviews

A quirky and original debut that sizzles with scintillating prose.

Bernardine Evaristo
Critic Reviews

There isn't a word out of place. Muckle Flugga is what happens when a poet has full command of a novel.

Blindboy
Critic Reviews

A fever dream of a book, melding myth and magic to the monumental landscape of Scotland.

Ian Rankin
Critic Reviews

To read Muckle Flugga is to stand on the edge of a sea cliff and scream into a storm. This is thrilling, beautiful and impossibly alive writing, bringing all of Michael Pedersen's ferocious and tender skills as poet and memoirist to his debut novel. There is clearly no form of writing Michael cannot master.

Chris Carse Wilson
Critic Reviews

Muckle Flugga is an epic, a glorious and wonderful book; the language so inventive and imaginative and the soul of it so tender and true.

Salena Godden
MichaelPedersen

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning poet and author of Boy Friends, which was a Sunday Times Critics Choice and shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish National Book Awards. He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and is the current Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh, and Edinburgh’s Makar.

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MichaelPedersen
Michael Pedersen