A brutal fable set in a timeless spartan rural community, Knives In Hens is published in this edition with a new introduction by Mark Fisher.

The village has lied. William has lied. It is not because I am undeserving. Not because I am young and they are old. God has given them nothing. I know this now. Knives in Hens is a brutal fable set in a timeless spartan rural community. First staged at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in June 1995, before transferring to the Bush Theatre, London, in November 1995, the play was playwright David Harrower's first professionally produced work. It has been staged in twenty-five countries around the world and is widely acknowledged as a modern Scottish classic. A remarkable play about the transformative power of knowledge and an emerging consciousness as the world moves from rural to the urban and industrial. With an introduction by Mark Fisher.

"An outstanding . . . play, David Harrower's Knives in Hens is set in a God-fearing, pre-industrial world and deals, passionately and intelligently with a woman's discovery of a language that corresponds with her feelings . . . A remarkable debut." - Guardian

"David Harrower's remarkable debut as a professional dramatist creates a haunting, poetic and entirely individual world of its own. I have never seen a play quite like it. . . You leave the theatre in no doubt that you have watched one of the year's most heartening and accomplished debuts. Harrower already seems like a writer built to last." - Daily Telegraph

"David Harrower's brittle, beautiful play Knives in Hens [...] is widely regarded as a masterpiece, and justifiably so. Its unvarnished language is at once coarse and moving." - List

"[A]bsolutely unique, sparsely poetic and deeply affecting. Its care with language (which is a central concern for the young women) is reminiscent of the assiduous selecting (and removing) of words in the work of Harold Pinter . . . [O]ne of the greatest plays in the Scottish theatrical canon" - Sunday Herald