This “challenging and absorbing” novel by the author of The Cone Gatherers explores evil done in the name of goodness with “a powerful and mordant irony” (The Scotsman, UK).
Set amidst the urban decay of Lanarkshire, Robin Jenkins’s Just Duffy reads like a modern-day Confession of a Justified Sinner. A teenager named Duffy, convinced of his own moral rectitude and appalled at the depravity around him, declares war on society. Ridiculous, yet horrifying at the same time, his campaign builds to a terrifying conclusion. Beset with ambiguity, Duffy is a ferocious indictment of Calvinistic moral certainty, of a struggle for good which results in only evil and destruction.
Exploring Robin Jenkins’s signature themes in stark simplicity, Just Duffy is one of the acclaimed author’s most significant and powerful novels. Its inexorable drive and power bear witness to a modern Greek tragedy played out on a Scottish stage. This edition of Just Duffy includes a new introduction by Margery Palmer McCulloch.
“Stark and hypnotically well written.”—The Irish Independent, UK
