Set in Scotland in a period of religious and political turmoil, James Hogg’s novel about religious fanaticism and megalomaniais a study of fanatical delusion with startling contemporary relevance. But it is also a fictional invention that, before postmodernism, explored the pitfalls of narrative and the limits of certainty, as well as an intense account of psychological disintegration. This novel influenced such writers as Andre Gide, Lord Byron, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Muriel Spark. Increasingly, it has been acknowledged as one of the great novels of the English language.