Lanark

Paperback, 573 pages

Published 1981

Canongate Books (2008)

Introduction by: William Boyd (2007)

Lanark: A Life in 4 Books

This work, originally published in 1981, has been hailed as the most influential Scottish novel of the second half of the 20th century. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying.

Set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, this modern vision of hell and humanity tells the interwoven stories of two men: Lanark and Duncan Thaw. As the Life in Four Books unfolds, the strange, buried relationship between Lanark and Thaw slowly starts to emerge.

"It was time Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom. This is it." -- Anthony Burgess

"Alasdair Gray is one of the most important living writers in English." -- Stephen Bernstein, The New York Times Book Review

"Remarkable ... Lanark is a work of loving and vivid imagination, yielding copious riches." -- William Boyd, The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Undoubtedly the best work of fiction written by a Scottish author for decades." -- Time Out (London)

"A quite extraordinary achievement, the most remarkable thing in Scottish fiction for a very long time." -- The Scotsman