Books

Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs (2011) is a wry comedy about young Scottish burger flippers. Fed up with their lot, they get mixed up with a continental network of anarchists. It featured in The Sunday Herald’s Books of the Year and Popmatters wrote, “this genial, engaging, yet serious search for meaning in a commodified global culture deserves wide acclaim” (John L. Murphy). It’s available as an audio book (audible.com), and is published in Spanish as Paz, amor y cócteles molotov (Hoja de Lata, 2013; translated by Raquel Duato García).

The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub (2013) follows a hapless PhD student on an epic journey through revolutionary European history, post-Kantian philosophy, unrequited desire, and scatalogical humour. It was a book of the year in The Morning Star, where it was described as “determinedly extraordinary”.

The Secret Baby Room (2015) is a mystery suspense thriller: a woman sees a baby high up in a derelict tower block that’s awaiting demolition. It was a 2015 book of the year in Northern Soul, where it was described as:

the unputtable-downable type of book, the one where you are loathe to finish, loathe to leave those characters behind, disappointed that reaching the last page means you have to leave their world and go back to your own.

Disnaeland (2022), invites us into a Scottish community during a global blackout. From sharing a meal cooked on a camping stove, to restarting the water supply using wind power, ordinary people do extraordinary things, building a new world in the ruins of the old. Starting with the deeply personal, shifting to the visionary, Disnaeland is a heartbreaking wonder.

Bringing light to a dark world is no mean feat, but the characters in the novel do just that, and so does the author. From the cunning pun of its title onward, Disnaeland is a scabrous treat. James Lovegrove, The Financial Times

Poignant and powerful (…) Little by little, a new community emerges in this gripping, funny and hopeful tale. Simon Ings, The Times

Disnaeland has verve and intelligence – I hope he writes more like it. D.D. Johnston’s novel is wildly imaginative. Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

He also writes a wee bit of short fiction and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.