Major Operation

by James Barke

This novel is set in Depression-era Glasgow and is overtly left-wing. We follow the tale of some shipyard workers who lose their jobs when the Depression hits and a bourgeois coal broker who loses both his firm and his wife. George Anderson, the coal broker, ends up in a charity hospital, with a duodenal ulcer and inflamed appendix, where he meets several members of the working class and, in particular, Jock MacKelvie. To his surprise, he not only gets to like them but soon becomes close to them and very close to Jock, so much so that he espouses Jock’s socialist views.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

James William Barke was born in Selkirkshire in 1905 to Galloway parents. He worked on the Clyde shipyards and was involved in local and nationalist politics before starting his writing career. His first novel, The World His Pillow, was published in 1933, but he is best remembered for his five-volume novelization of the life of Robert Burns, which was published in 1946 beginning with The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

The first two books in the Robert Burns quintet (Immortal Memory) were re-published in honor of the 250th anniversary of Burns' birth in 2009 by Edinburgh's Black & White Publishing. Barke also wrote The Land of the Leal (1939), a number of plays including Gregarach, and contributed to anthologies of Burns' poetry.