num_pages: 242
description: Ken is a scientist, with a scientist's dispassionate eye for the material world, as he reviews his life from the difficult 1930s, through the slaughter of World War I, back to an idyllic boyhood in the Highlands. When the mature man finally reaches the source of the river that has haunted his imagination for so many years, he finds that the wellsprings of magic and delight were always there, in the world all around him at the time, inexhaustible and irreverent. Awarded the James Tait Memorial Prize 1937, Highland River is written in prose as cool and clear as the water it describes, and is the simplest, most poetic, and perhaps the greatest of Neil Gunn's novels.
language: English
title: Highland River
titlecomplete: Highland River (Canongate Classic)
genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical, Scotland, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 230
places: Caithness, Scotland, Scotland, Highlands, Scotland
awards: awardedAt: -1041350400000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: -1041350400000
name: Saltire Society Literary Award
category: Book of the Year
publisher: Canongate UK