Calgary Alberta: Bayeux Arts, (1994). Hardcover first edition - A novel which intertwines myth and reality, short-listed for the Booker Prize and set on a fictitious island in the author's native Orkneys. "Thorfinn Ragnarson, the son of a crofter, relives the history of this island people, in his day-dreams, travelling back in time to join Viking adventurers at the court of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, then accompanying a Falstaffian knight to the battle of Bannockburn. Thorfinn wakes to the twentieth century and a community whose way of life, steeped in legend and tradition, has remained unchanged for centuries. But as the boy grows up the transforming effect of modern civilization brings momentous and irreversible changes to the island. During the Second World War Thorfinn finds himself in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and it is here that he discovers his gifts as a writer." 217 pp. ISBN: 1-896209122.