Dream Angus

by Alexander McCall Smith

Published 12 September 2006
Alexander McCall Smith retells the "Myth of Dream Angus" as part of the "Canongate Myths" series. Dreams to sell, fine dreams to sell...If he's in the right mood, divine Angus might grant you sight of your true love in a dream; you might even fall in love with him - but he'll never love you back. He's too busy making mischief - stealing the palace of the gods from his father, turning his enemies into pigs etc - until he is trapped by his own romantic games and falls for an unattainable woman, doomed to seek her forever. In twentieth-century Scotland, Angus's troubled alter ego searches for his true family; a psychotherapist who helps people understand their dreams, his life seems to parallel that of his mythic namesake, until we ask - could they be one and the same? Mesmerically weaving together the tales of the Celtic god and the Scottish scientist, Alexander McCall Smith unites dream and reality, leaving us to wonder: what is life, but the pursuit of our dreams?