Graeme Macrae Burnet
Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock and now lives in Glasgow. He is the author of five novels and a novella. His novels are His Bloody Project, Case Study and the French-set Gorski trilogy, the final part of which A Case of Matricide was published in October 2024. His novella Benbecula was published in October 2025 in Polygon’s Darklands series. The Guardian called it βintense and utterly compelling.β
His Bloody Project was shortlisted for the 2016 Booker Prize, the LA Times Mystery Book of the Year and the European Crime Fiction prize and won the Saltire Prize for Fiction. It was variously described as βastonishingβ, βfiendishly readableβ and βspellbindingβ. Case Study was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and included in the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022. Hannah Kent called it βa novel of mind-bending brilliance.β The Financial Times declared A Case of Matricide ‘a triumph’. It won the Australian Crime Writers Best International Crime award.
Graemeβs work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and he has appeared at festivals all over the world.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2022
βA page-turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted β¦ Rarely has being constantly wrong-footed been so much fun.β James Walton, The Times
“Very funny … engrossing.” Guardian
“Brilliant, bamboozling … burstingly alive and engaging.” Telegraph
“Compelling … I was hooked like a fish.”Β Spectator
‘I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.’
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to take her own life. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling β and often wickedly humorous β meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
From the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted His Bloody Project. www.casestudyGMB.com
Prizes and awards
SHORTLISTED: GORDON BURN PRIZE 2022
LONGLISTED: THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022
SHORTLISTED: NED KELLY AWARD 2022
LONGLISTED: HWA GOLD CROWN 2022
REVIEWS OF Case Study
βSuch is Burnetβs skill that he immediately convinces the reader that everything he is about to say is based on historical fact β¦ brilliantly depicted β¦ intriguing β¦ compulsive reading.β John Boyne, Irish Times
"Consistently inventive, caustically funny and surprisingly moving, this is one of the finest novels of the year.β Christian House, Financial Times
βYouβll be completely beguiled by this sly, darkly comic offering, with its unreliable narrator and its equally unreliable author.β Neil Armstrong, Mail on Sunday
βSinister, darkly compelling and well-plotted, with an elegant twist. Truly compelling.β Jane Shilling, Daily Mail
βBrilliant, bamboozling β¦ Burnet captures his charactersβ voices so brilliantly that what might have been just an intellectual game feels burstingly alive and engaging.β Jake Kerridge, Telegraph
βWhatβs real and whatβs not is beside the point in this skilful portrait of a disturbed woman and her encounters with an experimental 1960s psychotherapist β¦ Both strands quickly become compelling β¦ I was hooked like a fish.β Leyla Sanai
βIngenious β¦ a mystery wrapped in a riddle with as many questions as answers.β Stephen McGinty, Sunday Times
βForensic, elusive and mordantly funny β¦ layered with questions about authenticity and the self.β Booker Prize judges
βBurnetβs triumph is that itβs a page-turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted so as to reveal β or withhold β its secrets in a consistently satisfying way β¦ Rarely has being constantly wrong-footed been so much fun.β James Walton, The Times
"Enormous fun β¦ a mystery and a psychological drama wrapped up in one. Case Study is a triumph." Alex Preston, Observer
"Caustically funny and surprisingly moving, this is one of the finest novels of the year." Christian House, Financial Times
"A riveting psychological plot ... tortuous, cunning ... clever." Kate Webb, The Times Literary Supplement
'Encourages us to look more closely at the inherent instability of fiction itself β¦ genuinely affecting β¦ a very funny book.' Nina Allan, Guardian
