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How Late It Was How Late
WINNER OF 1994 THE BOOKER PRIZE. Sammy's had a bad week. Most of it's just a blank space in his mind, and the bits that he can remember, he'd rather not. His wallet's gone, along with his new shoes, he's been arrested then beaten up by the police and thrown out on the street - and he's just gone blind. He remembers a row with his girlfriend, but she seems to have disappeared; and he might have been trying to fix a bit of business up with an old mate, he's not too sure. Things aren't looking too good for Sammy and his problems have hardly begun. 'A passionate, scintillating, brilliant song of a book' Guardian
Dirt Road
'The truth is he didn't care how long he was going away. Forever would have suited him. It didn't matter it was America.' Murdo, a teenager obsessed with music, wishes for a life beyond the constraints of his Scottish island home and dreams of becoming his own man.Tom, battered by loss, stumbles backwards towards the future, terrified of losing his dignity, his control, his son and the last of his family life. Both are in search of something new as they set out on an expedition into the American South. On the road we discover whether the hopes of youth can conquer the fears of age.Dirt Road is a major novel exploring the brevity of life, the agonising demands of love and the lure of the open road. It is also a beautiful book about the power of music and all that it can offer. From the understated serenity of Kelman's prose - like a Hibernian Carver - emerges a devastating emotional power.
All We Have Is the Story
Novelist, playwright, essayist, and master of the short story. Artist and engaged working-class intellectual; husband, father, and grandfather as well as committed revolutionary activist. From his first publication (a short story collection An Old Pub Near the Angel on a tiny American press) through his latest novel (God's Teeth and other Phenomena) and work with Noam Chomsky (Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime—both published on a slightly larger American press), All We Have Is the Story chronicles the life and work—to date—of “Probably the most influential novelist of the post-war period.” (The Times) Drawing deeply on a radical tradition that is simultaneously politic...
The Busconductor Hines
Living in a bedsit, just coping with the boredom of being a busconductor, and fully aware that his plans to emigrate to Australia won't come to anything, Robert Hines is a young Glaswegian leading a pretty drab life. There are compensations, however, in his wife and child, and his eccentric, anarchic imagination. Kelman provides a brilliantly executed, uncompromising slice of Glasgow life – an intelligent, funny and humane novel.
James Kelman
One of the most powerful and provocative writers to have emerged in Britain in recent years, James Kelman has engendered a good deal of criticism over his use of 'bad' language. This text examines his work, exploring the social and political issues that he raises.
If it is Your Life
'Kelman portrays his world with bleakly beautiful honesty . . . a fine collection and an excellent window on Kelman's brooding world' The Times 'Perhaps you don't know the Man Booker International-shortlisted James Kelman but you should. You only have to read one phrase to recognise his utterly distinctive voice- lyrical, philosophical as a pub stool resident and steeped in the street. The result, for those who take words seriously, is canonical and pure joy' Metro 'The musings on men and women, and on the difficulty of connecting with other people, ring touchingly true. Kelman still has the power to compel' Sunday Telegraph 'As well as being a keen observer of society's underclasses and disenfranchised, Kelman also has a great eye for the absurdity of everyday life, something which comes to the fore in this collection' Independent on Sunday 'A collection by turns heart-breaking, profound and bitterly funny. It is a tour de force from a writer who treats language as carefully as if it were gold, and ends up turning it into something even more precious' Herald
Kieron Smith, Boy
An award-winning novel of urban boyhood: “No other . . . comes as close as this to Catcher in the Rye.” —The Literary Review A Man Booker Prize–winning author brings us inside the head of a young boy in a novel that offers a “splendid evocation of childhood in mid-20th-century Glasgow” (The Washington Post). Here is the story of a boyhood in a large industrial city during a time of great social change. Kieron grows from age five to early adolescence amid the general trauma of everyday life—the death of a beloved grandparent, the move to a new home. A whole world is brilliantly realized: sectarian football matches; ferryboats on the river; the unfairness of being a younger broth...
A Disaffection
Patrick Doyle, a Glasgow schoolteacher drowning in despair, can no longer control his students or his life and retreats into the world of corrugated cardboard pipes--a musical sanctuary of his own invention.
A Chancer
Tammas is 20, a loner and a compulsive gambler. Unable to hold a job for long, his life revolves around Glasgow bars, living with his sister and brother-in-law, betting shops, and casinos. Sometimes Tammas wins, more often he loses. But gambling gives him as good a chance as any of discovering what he seeks from life since society offers no prospect of a more fulfilling alternative.
A Chancer
Tammas is a gambler: when he's not at home with his sister, or at one of Glasgow's many bars, he's at the dog track or the bookie's or at the casino or occasionaly the races. Sometimes he wins, more often he loses but the gambling gives Tammas the best chance he's ever going to get to work out what's really important to him, the only chance that society is going to give him to discover himself.
