Since 1981, when Lanark was published by Canongate, Alasdair Gray has published twenty books, most of them novels and short stories. In his own words, 'Alasdair Gray is a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glaswegian pedestrian who has mainly lived by writing and designing books, most of them fiction.'
I was absolutely knocked out by Lanark. I think it's the best in
Scottish literature this century
*Iain Banks*
Probably the greatest novel of the century . . . it marked the
beginning of a new era
* * Observer * *
It was time Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the
modern idiom. This is it . . . [Gray is] the best Scottish novelist
since Sir Walter Scott
*Anthony Burgess*
When dawn comes up and retires in dismay, we find ourselves in the
presence of an overpowering surreal imagination. A saga of a city
where reality is about as reliable as a Salvador Dali watch
*Brian Aldiss*
A quite extraordinary achievement, the most remarkable thing in
Scottish fiction for a very long time. It has changed the
landscape
* * The Scotsman * *
Undoubtedly the best work of fiction written by a Scottish author
for decades
* * Time Out * *
Remarkable. . . Lanark is a work of loving and vivid imagination,
yielding copious riches
* * Times Literary Supplement * *
From a lesser writer, stygian darkness and baroque structure might
see off a mass audience and reduce a book to cult status. In Gray's
hands, the simple, direct prose found him a wide readership.
* * The Times * *
Lanark, the first novel and arguably the masterpiece of [Gray]
gouges a dwelling place in your imagination and leaves it forever
altered . . . Knocks the socks off almost everything written on
this little island in the past fifty years . . . It increases the
scope of fiction's possibilities
* * Independent * *
A phantasmagorical mixture of realism and fantasy
* * The List * *
In some ways it's even more relevant today. It's such an elaborate
work of both fantasy and political satire, a sort of Gulliver's
Travels for 20th Century Scotland
* * Scotland on Sunday * *
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