2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. To mark the anniversary, this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival includes a special series of six events, which, according to its website, ‘re-examine and reimagine this story, and its bold exploration of the darkest parts of the human soul’.
Events highlighted on the website include:
Grid Iron’s immersive audio and video journey bringing to life pivotal moments from the novel, rescripted by award-winning author Louise Welsh.
New Myths, in which storyteller Kirsty Logan, folksinger Kirsty Law and harpist Esther Swift reimagine the novel in contemporary times through the story of Gillian Tod, who grows up in a cult, drawing on everything from Scottish folk history, feminism and Naomi Klein.
A further layer added to the 2013 theatre piece Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, when its writer and director reconstruct the text, and their original production, in a Performance Essay in co-production with National Theatre of Scotland for ‘a suitably meta-interpretation that is part-lecture, part-documentary, part-theatre’.
Ian Rankin and Ever Dundas in a Justified Sinner Book Club panel discussion, Cut Up the Justified Sinner poetry workshops, and a special Close Read event with James Robertson, author of the Confessions-influenced novel The Testament of Gideon Mack.
Further details of the Justified Sinner events can be found at https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/themes/confessions-374 null
This year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival runs from 10-25 August. Full details of the programme, including how to book, are on the Festival website https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on Booking opens on 20 June.
