Sarah Bernstein and Chris Kohler
University Of Aberdeen
King's College
Aberdeen
AB24 3FX
Two of the most exciting novelists working in Scotland today. Sarah Bernstein’s second novel, Study for Obedience , was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Canadian Scotiabank Giller Prize. She was included in the Granta Best of Under 40 List. Chris Kohler’s debut novel Phantom Limb was published in August by Atlantic Books. A startling debut, it is a clear landmark in contemporary Scottish writing: unsettling, Gothic and mordantly compelling. Come along to hear Sarah and Chris talk about their work, the road to being published, and questions of realism, identity and current literary culture.
Sarah Bernstein is from Montreal, Canada, and lives in the North West Highlands. Her writing has appeared in Granta , among other publications. She is the author of Now Comes the Lightning (Pedlar Press), The Coming Bad Days (Daunt/Knopf Canada) and Study for Obedience (Granta/Knopf Canada), which was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, won the 2023 Giller Prize and was longlisted for the Highland Book Prize. In 2023, she was included in the fifth cohort of Granta' s Best of Young British Novelists.
A woman moves from the place of her birth to a ‘remote northern country’ to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. Soon after she arrives, a series of unfortunate events occurs: collective bovine hysteria; the death of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight...
Chris Kohler is from Glasgow, Scotland. His short stories have been published in 3AM, Egress, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Gutter, Dark Mountain and Minor Literatures . He was shortlisted for the VS Pritchett Short Story Prize 2023. Phantom Limb is his debut novel:
One evening, Gillis – a young Scottish minister who technically doesn’t believe in god – falls into a hole left by a recently dug up elm tree and discovers an ancient disembodied hand in the soil. He’s about to rebury it when the hand… beckons to him. He spirits it back to his manse and gives it pen and paper, whereupon it begins to doodle scratchy and anarchic visions. Somewhere, in the hand’s deep history, there lies a story of the Scottish reformation, of art and violence, and of its owner long since dead. But for Gillis, there lies only opportunity: to reinvent himself as a prophet, proclaim the hand a miracle and use it for reasons both sacred and profane… to impress his ex-girlfriend, and to lead himself and his country out of inertia and into a dynamic, glorious future.
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