One of the widely acknowledged greats of Scottish literature, William McIlvanney, will be heading to Shetland in September for Shetland Arts Wordplay 2006 Book Festival.

William McIlvanney is one of Scotland's foremost writers whose award-winning novels include LAIDLAW, DOCHERTY, which won the Whitbread Award for Fiction, THE PAPERS OF TONY VEITCH, THE BIG MAN, which was made into a film starring Liam Neeson, STRANGE LOYALTIES, and THE KILN. He has also published a volume of short stories, WALKING WOUNDED, three books of poetry and a collection of essays and journalism, SURVIVING THE SHIPWRECK. His new novel WEEKEND will be published in August.

“I think William McIlvanney is really just one of those legendary figures in Scottish literature,” says Shetland Arts Trust Literature Development Officer, Alex Cluness. “It’s a tremendous boost for Wordplay that he has agreed to appear at the festival.”

In his new novel, WEEKEND, a group of English Literature lecturers and students from Glasgow gather for a study weekend in a Victorian mansion hotel on a Scottish island, though studying is not exactly what some of them have in mind. And the weekend does prove to be a major turning point in the emotional lives of several people – just not quite in the way any of them expected. As entertaining as it is thought-provoking, William McIlvanney’s novel brilliantly illustrates how humans are driven by animal instincts, but have the mental capacity to analyse, harness and rue them. Which also means we continue to dream, even when our dreams fail us.

Shetland Arts Wordplay 2006 festival will take place 8-10 September, in the Clickimin Leisure Complex, Lerwick.