If you're heading for Edinburgh this week and want something to read on the train, or in those occasional quiet moments between shows, I have the perfect thing. For me, there is no better Edinburgh reading than Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's Tale. This tale of hate is probably Stevenson's best book. It has the adventurous spirit of Treasure Island, the romantic 18th-century Scottish setting of Kidnapped, the obsession with doubles and divided selves that makes Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde such a resonant parable, and a climactic image as horrific as that in The Body Snatcher. Its blend of historical romance, travel fantasy and gothic nightmare makes it deeply pleasurable.
In some ways it's like reading some Essential Stevenson anthology or a postmodernist pastiche of his novels. It is as if he uses his own fictional world as material, holding his favourite genres up for examination like a series of exotic specimens under the magnifying glass. The novel is episodic, and each episode involves a gigantic temporal leap; in its discontinuous structure it looks forward to the contemporary novel. It was published in 1889 and, like Joseph Conrad's novels, can be read now as an alternative model of modern fiction.
Through all its wild narrative leaps and surreal images, The Master of Ballantrae never loses sight of the terrible and disturbing family drama at its heart. This makes it a spectacular essay on the nature of seriousness in fiction. You couldn't ask for more fun in a novel – it even has pirates – but the theme of this marvellous book is worthy of Dostoevsky.
If you've read Stevenson as a child, or adult, you won't need telling that he is one of life's delights. If you haven't, treat yourself to a meeting with the Master.
