Graeme Macrae Burnet for Benbecula

Join Graeme Macrae Burnet, the Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project, to celebrate Benbecula - the lastest of Polygon's Darkland Tales.

On 9 July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a labourer from Liniclate on the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother and aunt. At trial in Inverness he was found to be criminally insane and confined in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison.

Some years later, Angus's older brother Malcolm recounts the events leading up to the murders while trying to keep a grip on his own sanity. Malcolm is living in isolation, ostracised by the community and haunted by this gruesome episode in his past.

Graeme Macrae Burnet is a Scottish writer. His first novel, The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau, earned him the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award in 2013, and his second novel, His Bloody Project, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, and Case Study was longlisted in 2022.