The Green Isle of the Great Deep

When young Art and Old Hector fall into a deep river pool while poaching salmon, they awaken in the Green Isle—the legendary Highland paradise of the afterlife. But the heaven they find is no paradise. It has been transformed into a sterile corporate state where individual thought is outlawed, memory is erased, and fruit from the sacred trees is strictly forbidden. Despite the abundance of the land, the population are subdued and miserable, ruled over by a strict upper class and forbidden to participate in its plenty. Young Art, however, is not so easily controlled and his actions begin a chain of events which will change the Green Isle forever.

Blending Celtic myth with terrifyingly modern surveillance themes, Gunn’s mid-century dystopian classic is a fierce, poetic defence of the human spirit against totalitarian control. Gunn draws many parallels in this tale, from the biblical references to Eden and the Tree of Knowledge, to a commentary on his contemporary situation in 1940s Nazi Europe.

As the world teeters once more on the edge of international conflict and political fracture, this timely new edition restores a vital and visionary classic to its rightful place alongside George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.