The Old Man of the Sea Makes Waves John Aberdein Came to Writing Late in Life, After Working As a Fisherman. Now He's Landed a Prize for His First Novel

Summary

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WHEN John Aberdein began translating Herman Melville's Moby-Dick into Scots back in 1988, people asked why he was doing it. "My joke, " he says now, "was that I'd done the market research and there was a huge demand for it, untapped. But really, I wanted to go back to the roots, the language my father spoke because he came from the country. And he was dying at the time." This, Aberdein says, was his apprenticeship: the process that developed the skills that would lead to his first novel, Amande's Bed, last week pronounced winner of the Saltire award for best first book.

We meet in his daughter's Edinburgh flat, two days after the award ceremony. Aberdein has an air of modest excitement. He knew he had won beforehand, he says, though he didn't tell his family. "It means a great deal to me, because of the nature of the Saltire Society. It's committed to Scottish literature and the panel included professors of literature for whom I have the highest respect. Douglas Gifford said the book was in the tradition of Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Jessie Kesson. After the long apprenticeship, to think I've written something that could be compared to these wonderful writers . . ."

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The Old Man of the Sea Makes Waves John Aberdein Came to Writing Late in Life, After Working As a Fisherman. Now He's Landed a Prize for His First Novel

At my request, he reads a section of the novel, which describes the "immutabilities of porridge". The extract is funny and vivid like the rest of the book, and it's easy to see why Ali Smith, in an admiring review, described it as "hilarious, dark, sweet, crowded and alive". It'...

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