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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Alasdair Gray (born 28 December 1934) is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years. It is now regarded as a classic, and was described by The Guardian as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction." His novel Poor Things (1992) won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. He is a Scottish nationalist and a republican. Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision" and as "a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today", and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian". Book cover designed and Illustrated by Alasdair Gray.Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow. His father had been wounded in the First World War and worked at the time in a factory, while his mother worked in a shop. During the Second World War, Gray was evacuated to Perthshire and then Lanarkshire, experiences which he drew on in his later fiction. The family lived on a council estate, and Gray received his education from a combination of state education, public libraries, and public service broadcasting: "the kind of education British governments now consider useless, especially for British working class children", as he later commented. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957, and taught there from 1958 to 1962. It was as a student that he first began what would becom... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=21083854 ... Read more

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An irreverent magazine of new writing, interviews, short fiction, poetry, reviews and opinions. This particular issue includes new fiction from A.L. Kennedy, Christopher Hope and Scott Bradfield, "The Heresies of Alasdair Gray" and Seamus Heaney's "Midnight Verdict". ... Read more

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The language, customs and beliefs that help a nation to survive are mainly found in its songs and fabulous or actual narratives. This work tells how the writers have kept reinventing Scotland from early times to the 20th century. It concentrates on the greatest makers of language, whilst honouring many who maintained the traditions linking them. The author's idiosyncratic overview of Scottish writing is an intriguing account by one of Britain's best contemporary writers. ... Read more

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"Soho Square" is the first of a series of Bloomsbury annual anthologies of new works. It contains poems, essays, short stories and drawings. The essays include Joseph Brodsky's thoughts on the idea of travel and Philip Roth on vocation. Patricia Highsmith, Fay Weldon and R.M.Lamming contribute short stories and there are poems by Paul Muldoon, Andrew Motion, Michael Hofman and Carol Rumens. Some drawings by Glen Baxter and Michael Leunig are also included. ... Read more