Donald S. Murrays Werk ist tief in seinem insularen Erbe verwurzelt und erforscht die tiefe Verbindung zwischen Menschheit und der natürlichen Welt. Sein Schreiben, das sowohl Lyrik als auch Prosa umfasst, befasst sich oft mit komplexen menschlichen Emotionen, die eine Mischung aus Melancholie und Hoffnung aufweisen. Murrays unverwechselbarer Stil verbindet traditionelles Geschichtenerzählen mit einer zeitgenössischen Sensibilität und bietet den Lesern Erzählungen, die sowohl fesselnd als auch zum Nachdenken anregend sind. Seine lyrische Prosa und seine aufschlussreiche Perspektive haben seinem Werk bedeutende literarische Anerkennung eingebracht.
Donald S Murray is widely recognised for his empathy and remarkable ability to convey emotion with restraint and poignancy. In this short collection of poems written during lockdown at his Shetland home, Murray explores the changing geography of the island and how it has, in turn, changed him
Every year, ten men from Ness, at the northern tip of the Isle of Lewis, sail north-east for some forty miles to a remote rock called Sulasgeir. Their mission is to catch and harvest the guga; the almost fully grown gannet chicks nesting on the two hundred foot high cliffs that circle the tiny island. The Guga Hunters tells their story.
A powerful, poignant and award-winning novel of the UK's worst peacetime maritime disaster since the Titanic - the 1919 Iolaire tragedy off the coast of Isle of Lewis - written by a son of the Hebrides.
A poisoned breeze blows across the waves ... Operation Cauldron, 1952: Top- secret germ warfare experiments on monkeys and guinea pigs are taking place aboard a vessel moored off the Isle of Lewis. Local villagers Jessie and Duncan encounter strange sights on the deserted beach nearby and suspect the worst.
Growing up on the edge of Lewis, the vastness of Russia never felt too distant for Donald S Murray. Inspired by the Russian canon, Red Star Over Hebrides draws upon the experiences of his youth in short stories, verse and song, shifting continually between myth and history, the absurd and moving, the satirical and everyday.
'There have always been lighthouses in my life. There has been a closeness and steadiness to our relationship, as if they have kept pace and in close contact with me.' Lighthouses punctuate Scotland’s coastline – a stoic presence on the edge of the landscape. Since the earliest of these hardy structures were raised, they have been a lifeline for seafarers at the mercy of treacherous weather and uncertain navigation. Today over 100 of Scotland's lighthouses are listed buildings. The lighthouse is now one of many maritime resources which act ‘for the safety of all’. But we are still drawn to the solitary life of the keeper, the beauty of the lens of the lamp and the calm reassurance of a flashing light on a distant shore. Donald S Murray explores Scotland’s lighthouses through history, storytelling and the voices of the lightkeepers. From ancient beacons to the work of the Stevensons and the Northern Lighthouse Board, and from wartime strife to automation and preservation, the lighthouses stand as a testament to the nation’s innate connection to the sea. Published in partnership between Historic Environment Scotland and the Northern Lighthouse Board.
From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a remarkable 'unreliable biography' of Karl Kjerulf Einarsson: an artist and an adventurer, a charlatan and a swindler, forever in search of Atlantis.
April 24, 1923. The SS Metagama is inching out of Stornoway harbor, Scotland. On board are Finlay and Mairead, young and hopeful, destined for Detroit. On the other side of the Atlantic, the effects of the Great Depression are inescapable. Prejudice and division are rife, and though they remain bound by a shared past, their lives soon diverge. In an adopted country that is tense with both opportunity and loss, can Mairead and Finlay keep their promises to one another to look only forward, and resist the constant pull of home? From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a poignant and deeply evocative novel of the 20th-century emigrant experience in the New World. With lyrical prose and masterful storytelling, Murray paints a vivid portrait of the resilient Hebrideans-in-exile who struggled between holding on and letting go.