The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner — James Hogg

Hogg was a self educated Borders poet who published his novel anonymously in 1824 to predictably hostile reviews Dismissed as an insult to religion the book was largely forgotten until the late 1940s when André Gide pronounced it a masterpiece Hogg was sensitive to the fractures of the human mind and his book gave bloody birth to the psychological novel It is also one of the earliest examples of the Doppelgänger in literature without it there might have been no Dr Jekyll no Norman Bates no Strangers on a Train And though the voice and location are quintessentially Scottish they are echoed far beyond the land of RD Laing s divided self Above all Justified Sinner is a terrifying embodiment of religious zealotry and has sombre present day resonances The Independent