Nairn Book & Arts Festival: Roddy Maclean

2 September 2023 11:15 am

Join Ruairidh MacIlleathain (Roddy Maclean) at the Nairn Book & Arts Festival as he discusses his latest novel, Tàcharan Mhealbhaigh, with a bilingual Q&A session about the challenges and joys of writing fictional narratives for adults in Gaelic.

Ruairidh is a broadcaster, writer, educator and storyteller, based in Inverness, and working mostly in Gaelic. This year he launched his second Gaelic novel for adults Tàcharan Mhealbhaigh (‘The Changeling of Melvay’). Set on a fictional island off the West Highland coast, the story is one of intrigue and political extremism in which a Gaelic speaking island community is forced to confront the evils of Nazism following the island’s purchase in the 1930s. The ‘tàcharan’ of the title is a child born on Melvay of uncertain parenthood who becomes a pawn in an international and deadly chess-game that haunts the island during the Second World War and its aftermath. Ruairidh’s first full-length novel – Còig Duilleagan na Seamraig ‘The Five Leaves of the Shamrock’ won the Donald Meek Award and was short-listed for the Saltire Society Awards (2019).