Robin Jenkins once wrote, "The serious novelist in Scotland today is very much on his own." Certainly, Jenkins's role within the Scottish context is an idiosyncratic one. Despite his involvement with the realism fashionable in the 1950s, the time at which he began his writing career, he also displays an inclination to the Scots tradition of tales of fantasy and adventure. Except in his use of dialogue, he makes little concession to the writing in Scots favored by the Scottish literary renaissance movement; nor does he use the techniques of modernism. He has been described as the most important single figure in the Scottish novel since World War II--he is certainly one of the most prolific--yet he remains relatively obscure. Despite the serious critical attention and praise that have been given to his work, he virtually refuses to comment upon it. The man has much of the enigmatic...