num_pages: 272
description: Set in early eighteenth-century Scotland, the novel recounts the corruption of a boy of strict Calvinist parentage by a mysterious stranger under whose influence he commits a series of murders. The stranger assures the boy that no sin can affect the salvation of an elect person. The reader, while recognizing the stranger as Satan, is prevented by the subtlety of the novel's structure from finally deciding whether, for all his vividness and wit, he is more than a figment of the boy's imagination. This edition reprints the text of the unexpurgated first edition of 1824, later 'corrected' in an attempt to placate the Calvinists.
language: English
title: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
titlecomplete: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
characters: Robert Wringhim
genres: Religion, Historical Fiction, Novels, Gothic, Literature, Horror, Scotland, Classics, Fiction, 19th Century
ratings_count: 8488
places: Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland
awards: awardedAt: -694281600000
name: Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
category: Roman, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Times Literary Supplement
category: Book of the Year
publisher: Oxford University Press