John Aberdein is a writer based in Orkney. His father James (Jimmy) was from Huntly, a Sergeant Mechanic with RAF Coastal Command during the War, while his mother Marion was from the city of Aberdeen and in the WRNS or Wrens, based in Cornwall on Atlantic U-boat surveillance duty. After the War Jimmy became the electricians' shop steward in the fertiliser works of SAI, very politically active in the Trades Council, and in the Communist Party until 1956. Marion, mother of three, who had been a shorthand typist at John E. Esslemont, became a full-time housewife in their East End tenement.

 

John Aberdein's novels so far have been set largely in Aberdeen: Amande's Bed set in 1956, and Strip the Willow in a dystopian 'now'.

 

Amande's Bed (Thirsty Books, Saltire First Book Award, 2005) is a good blasting story, a great river-rush of language and a book made of the combination of wisdom, energy and generosity. Startling, deeply bawdy, hilarious, dark, sweet, crowded and alive. In the end it moved me to tears. 
Ali Smith, The Guardian

Strip the Willow (Polygon, SAC Fiction of the Year, 2010) is as darkly dystopian and uncannily prophetic as its predecessor was tenderly, lyrically nostalgic. We’re once again in the city of Aberdeen, but in a future where ‘Uberdeen’ is being nothing less than shafted by the global corporation ‘LeopCorp’, which has taken over the bankrupt city council...

Gavin Wallace, Literature Director, Scottish Arts Council