Page 287: Many thanks to Julie Dash for permission to quote from her film Daughters of the Dust, New York, 1991. Thank you to Serpent’s Tail for permission to quote from Chris Kraus, I Love Dick, 1997.

Elsewhere in the book, Alice paraphrases Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages, University of Minnesota Press, 1999, and quotes The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson, Oxford University Press, 1988. Some of the words Colin speaks are adapted from a BBC Frontline Scotland documentary, The Witch Hunt. Where Mariam quotes from the Risalo by Shah Abdul Latif, I have adapted Elsa Kazi’s translation (Hyderabad, Sindh, 1965; http://apnaorg.com/books/english/shah-jo-risalo/book.php?fldr=book). Parvati quotes Prof Kim McCone’s essay, ‘“King” and “Queen” in Celtic and Indo-European’, Ériu, vol. 49, Royal Irish Academy, 1998, pp. 1–12.

I first heard Lisa O’Neill’s rendition of an Irish traveller song from the Cassidy family on Radio 3’s Late Junction, a show which I have loved from the beginning. (I can still remember the thrill of it; standing in my kitchen in Orkney and looking out at the night, as that voice sang of murder and revenge.) Lisa’s version, which she calls ‘Along the North Strand’, was released in 2018, just after the years in which the book is set; but maybe it toured presciently to my islands before that. If not, then it definitely arrived with Sam Lee, who recorded a beautiful version, ‘Northlands’, in 2012. Of all the other wonderful music I listened to while writing this book, Björk’s Utopia was particularly apposite; in particular track four.

Acknowledgements

If Cwen has an editorial apotheosis, I found her in Helen Conford, with whom it was a joy to work. I am very thankful for the care taken by Sarah Chalfant, Alba Ziegler-Bailey and all at the Wylie Agency. It has been a pleasure entrusting this book to the fabulous team at Profile: Andrew Franklin, Hannah Westland, Niamh Murray, Anna-Marie Fitzgerald, Valentina Zanca and Sarah-Jane Forder. In particular I would like to thank my Highland managing editor Lottie Fyfe for her great fortitude and forbearance. Thank you to the directors of Arcola Theatre in Hackney for my desk; to Santa Maddalena Foundation; to Hawthornden Castle Writers’ Retreat; to Arts Council England for supporting the related art film and project about islands of women (https://www.alicealbinia.co.uk/cwen-islands-of-women-film); and to the Royal Literary Fund, a utopia for its writers during lockdown.