THE acclaimed Scottish writer Ali Smith has spoken how she feels the world is living through the unreal"theatre" of Donald Trump's presidency.
Ms Smith, the award winning author of books such as Hotel World, Autumn and How to Be Both, told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the presidency of President Donald Trump did not seem real.
She said: "I feel like Trump is like theatre, that he is not even really the President, and there is theatre happening.
"Every day we go 'aah' when something shocking happens, but something else is happening behind Trump.
"It is like the backdrop has come to the front of the stage, and that is what we are watching."
She added: "It is all our problem, all of use have to deal with that front drop, what western culture is doing."
Autumn has been described as one of the first 'post-Brexit' novels, but Smith said the roots of the Brexit vote have been growing for a long time in the UK.
The writer and academic, originally from Inverness, said she felt we were living in "times which are asking us to be psychotic".
On Brexit, she said: "The catalyst has been happening for a long time, was been happening all along, and has taken a shape because of the deep division in our society.
"That vote we had last year, and the vote we had this year too, pointed up the divisions, which no one is going out of their way to help or to solve or to heal.
"We have had a whole year of no one going out of their way to solve or heal, those particular divisions.
"The things that were already in place became very visible, appeared in the large structure which Brexit is now going to be, which seems to have appeared over night.
"The monolith of Brexit, it was there all along, and its roots were deep and are deep.
"So the book was always about division, and a society deciding about other people."
Smith, whose novel Autumn, the first part of a series of four novels linked to the seasons, had been lauded, also read the first two pages of her new book for the first in public.
She read from Winter to the packed audience, a book she said she finished writing last weekend.
Ms Smith spoke of how important was for her to see her books translated, and how it was key for her to see her books published in another language.
"Language is a family," she said, "there is another reason why borders are mad, because all of the languages, are related, and it is all [the same] DNA fabric."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here