Unstated: Scottish Writers on Independence, (2012) Edited by Scot Hames,

Abstract

This book contains 27 essays by writers and activists based in Scotland with varying attitudes towards the question of independence.  In his introduction, Stirling University’s Scott Hames suggests that, since Scotland has already achieved a form of cultural autonomy led by its novelists, poets and dramatists, the question of independence for Scotland should be discussed in an open space that allows more radical and nuanced thinking to take place.   What connects all of the essays is their authors’ ability to imagine aims and outcomes for the future of British democracy that are not readily available elsewhere. Hames suggests that the book should ‘set the choices before us within parameters chosen by writers themselves’, as opposed to the deterministic narratives of organised politics. I think that this has been achieved