Joseph Knight - Softcover

Robertson, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007150253 ISBN 13: 9780007150250

Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

‘A book of such quality as to persuade you that historical novels are the true business of the writer.’
Daily Telegraph

A gripping, shocking story of history, enlightement and slavery from the bestselling author of THE FANATIC. JOSPEH KNIGHT confirms James Robertson as one of our foremost novelists.

Exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Sir John Wedderburn made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. In the 1770s, he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name. He brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave and a token of his years in the Caribbean.

Now, in 1802, Sir John Wedderburn is settling his estate, and has hired a solicitor's agent, Archibald Jamieson, to search for his former slave. The past has haunted Wedderburn ever since Culloden, and ever since he last saw Knight, in court twenty-four years ago, in a case that went to the heart of Scottish society, pitting master against slave, white against black, and rich against poor.

As long as Knight is missing, Wedderburn will never be able to escape the past. Yet what will he do if Jamieson's search is successful? And what effect will this re-opening of old wounds have on those around him? Meanwhile, as Jamieson tries to unravel the true story of Joseph Knight he begins to question his own motivation. How can he possibly find a man who does not want to be found?

James Robertson's second novel is a tour de force, the gripping story of a search for a life that stretches over sixty years and moves from battlefields to the plantations of Jamaica, from Enlightenment Edinburgh to the back streets of Dundee. It is a moving narrative of history, identity and ideas, that dramatically retells a fascinating but forgotten episode of Scottish history.

About this title

Review:

‘Robertson is a moralist whose deftness of touch and gift for narrative clarity disguises the sheer heft of his sermon. His belief in the power of books to alter things glows at the centre of what he writes.’
Ali Smith, Guardian

'’A book of such quality as to persuade you that historical novels are the true business of the writer, that it's through the past that we might understand ourselves best, that it's in the past that the imagination can be most free, but also most authentic.'
Daily Telegraph

'A brilliant achievement and a great read.'
Scotland on Sunday

From the Back Cover:

Exiled to Jamaica after the horrors of the Battle of Culloden, the young Sir John Wedderburn quickly made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a sugar planter. When he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name, he brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave, one of the first in Scotland, a token of his years in the Caribbean. At the end of his life, long after the Edinburgh court case which went to the heart of Scottish society, pitting master against slave, property against freedom, Wedderburn tries to track down Joseph Knight who has been missing for twenty-four years and whom he has never forgotten.

From the Highland battlefields to the Caribbean, from Enlightenment Edinburgh to the back streets of Dundee, James Robertson's second novel is a tour de force that dramatically retells a fascinating but forgotten episode in Scottish history.

Praise for 'The Fanatic:'

'Utterly compelling...the sort of debut that sadly comes along only too rarely.'
'The Times'

'Scottish history has never been so gripping.'
'Sunday Herald'

'A remarkable book'
Andrew Marr, 'Observer'

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0007150253
• ISBN 13: 9780007150250
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384