The Ossians by Doug Johnstone

The gritty, darkly funny cult novel from one of Scotland's finest authors.

A last-chance winter road trip for a Scottish band spirals into wild chaos – seagull massacres, bomb tests, and darkly funny rock’n’roll madness on the edge. A raw, darkly funny novel by one of Scotland’s finest authors – newly reissued! ANNIVERSARY EDITION with an INTRODUCTION BY VAL McDERMID 

Connor is twenty-four: brilliant, broken, and out of control. He’s the swaggering frontman of The Ossians, a Scottish indie band on the brink of signing a major record deal. Desperate to make their mark, they set off on a two-week winter tour across Scotland’s cities and hinterlands — a last-ditch attempt to find fame, purpose, and themselves. But the tour soon spirals into a surreal, chaotic odyssey. From seedy bars and snowbound towns to a final, defining Glasgow gig, the band hurtles through a whirlwind of seagull massacres, botched drug deals, a mysterious stalker, radioactive beaches, bomb-testing ranges, epileptic fits, riotous Russian submariners, deadly storms, epiphanies, regular beatings and random shootings. Raw, darkly funny and wild with energy, The Ossians is a gloriously anarchic story of rock’n’roll obsession, national identity and self-destruction — and what it means to belong: in a band, in a country, in a life unravelling at speed. ___

‘So exhilaratingly authentic, you can hear the chords and smell the vomit’ — Christopher Brookmyre

‘A gripping, compelling road trip around modern Scotland’ — Niall Griffiths