Night Waves - Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Night Waves is in Edinburgh to examine a book hailed as one of the true greats of world literature. Matthew Sweet and guests, including writer Ian Rankin, theatre director Mark Thomson, forensic psychiatrist Anne MacDonald and folklorist Valentina Bold, discuss James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. It is a book with so many dimensions it has been described as the ultimate unclassifiable novel. It is a thriller with a psychological element, a political dimension and a religious spin. Published anonymously in 1824, it contains a probing quest into the nature of religious fanaticism and Calvinist predestination and has been hugely influential. As writer Ian Rankin has noted without it there would be no Dr Jekyll or Miss Jean Brodie but it 'seems as fresh as the day it was written - and more relevant than ever.'.