Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal. You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt.

My guest today is Alan Warner.

He is a member of the new Scottish Renaissance,

about which you'll hear only a little

because I want to talk about his writing.

The book that's been

published first in America is Morvern Caller. It's a novel narrated by a woman named

Morvern Caller. She, in an interesting way, begins the novel by coming home and finding her

boyfriend dead. His hand has been nearly cut off

by himself with a cleaver. He slit his throat. What's interesting about this in a way is that he is

the author of a novel. And in a sense, one gets the feeling consistently that Morvern might have been

a character in the ghost novel that he might have written, that this is Morvern usurping

a novel space. Can you...

Was that in your mind?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, that's what's strange

about the commercial success of this novel

because it's my first novel,

...