The narrators’ well-paced reading and their clarity with the Scots accent make it all the more accessible to listeners today. One would think a nearly two-hundred-year-old novel would be stylistically dated, but it sounds contemporary in both style and subject matter. The book has two parts: the first is a third-hand account of the story, read by the steady-voiced McArdle, the second is the memoirs of the possessed killer, read by the younger-voiced Kenny who embodies the main character and tells the story of his tutelage under a mysterious Satan-like entity.

This 1824 prototype of the psycho-killer confessional novel is eerily brought to life in a new reading by Nicholas McArdle and Peter Kenny. Titles by James Hogg Titles by James Hogg The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (unabridged) Reviews Misunderstood and neglected for more than a century, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is now regarded as a classic of the supernatural, comparable with Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or Dracula.ĭownload PDF booklet More product details ISBN: The events are told from several different viewpoints, so that truth and reality appear to dissolve in this disturbing story of the dark legacy of Calvinist doctrine, and the madness to which it led one man.

Audio Sample James Hogg The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified SinnerĪ psychological thriller before its time, James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824, takes us back to the world of 18th-century Scotland, into a mind haunted by religious obsession, and driven to commit murder.

The Suicide's Grave by James Hogg