Christopher Whyte

In the meantime he started to write prose in English and has published four novels, Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin (1995), The Warlock of Strathearn (1997), The Gay Decameron (1998) and The Cloud Machinery (2000).

[citation needed] In 1982, Derick Thomson began to feature in the quarterly review Gairm, of which he was the editor, Whyte's translations into Gaelic of poets including Cavafy, Ritsos, Ujević, Mörike, Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva.

[8] An Tràth Duilich (Callander, Diehard Press 2002) is a Gaelic-only collection, containing a pivotal sequence about an urban adolescence troubled by religious and sexual guilt, and a dramatic cantata focusing on the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, constructed by sculptors Nicola and Giovanni Pisano in 1277–1278.

Dealbh Athar (Dublin, Coiscéim 2009) offers a very forthright treatment of how Whyte was molested by his father, its consequences, and the attendant family circumstances, with a translation into Irish by Gréagóir Ó Dúill.

Whyte's fifth collection, in Gaelic only, An Daolag Shìonach (The Chinese Beetle) (Glasgow, Clò Gille Moire 2013), brings together uncollected poems for the years from 1987 to 1999, and a rich crop of new work from 2004 to 2007.

[11] Whyte's first novel, Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin (London, Gollancz 1995], is a satire on sectarianism in Glasgow, anti-gay prejudice, gay self-repression, and scandals that have afflicted the Catholic Church in Scotland.

This novel was translated into Italian as La macchina delle nuvole (Milan, Corbaccio 2002) and into German as Die stumme Sängerin (Berlin, Kindler 2002, paperback Frankfurt-am-Main, Fischer 2005).

[14] In 1998, he translated 'Window on Catalonia', a selection of essays, short stories by Quim Monzó and Sergi Pàmies and poems by Gabriel Ferrater, Maria-Mercè Marçal and Narcís Comadira for Chapman magazine.

Two of his most controversial contributions, 'Fishy Masculinities', on the gender ideology of Neil Gunn's fiction, and 'Queer Readings, Gay Texts' on Walter Scott's Redgauntlet and Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, elicited full-length attempts at refutation in the pages of the Scottish Literary Journal.

[citation needed] In a seminal essay on Hugh MacDiarmid's long modernist poem 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle', Whyte applies an interpretive grid inspired by Roland Barthes' reading of Balzac in S/Z.

[22] Whyte's work has been seminal in bringing into the public domain substantial manuscript materials by Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain 1911–1996), arguably the most significant Gaelic writer of the 20th century.

[citation needed] His edition with commentary of An Cuilithionn 1939 and Unpublished Poems was launched during a conference to celebrate the centenary of the poet's birth held at the Gaelic College, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, in Skye in June 2011.