Product Description

"Lanark", a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying. Widely recognised as a modern classic, Alasdair Gray's magnum opus was first published in 1981 and immediately established him as one of Britain's leading writers. Comparisons have been made to Dante, Blake, Joyce, Orwell, Kafka, Huxley and Lewis Carroll. This new edition should cement his reputation as one of our greatest living writers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25737 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 573 pages

Review
"Remarkable... Lanark is a work of loving and vivid imagination, yielding copious riches." Times Literary Supplement " 'It was time Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom. This is it." Anthony Burgess "I was absolutely knocked out by Lanark. I think it's the best in Scottish literature in the twentieth century" Iain Banks"

About the Author
ALASDAIR GRAY is an old asthmatic Glaswegian who lives by painting, writing and book design. His books include the novels 1982 Janine, The Fall of Kelvin Walker, McGrotty and Ludmilla, Poor Things, A History Maker; short story collections Unlikely Stories Mostly, Ten Tales Tall & True, Mavis Belfrage, The Ends of Our Tethers; poetry Old Negatives; polemic Why Scots Should Rule Scotland 1992, Why Scots Should Rule Scotland 1997, How We Should Rule Ourselves (with Adam Tomkins); play Working Legs (for people without them); autobiography Satire Self Portrait 4; literary history The Anthology of Prefaces. His commentary on his paintings and drawings, A Life in Pictures, will be published by Canongate in 2007. His hobbies are socialism and liking the English.

Customer Reviews

Excellent. Loved it.
I bought this book after trawling the internet for a copy of Gray's 'Unlikely Stories, Mostly' collection and coming up fruitless. I'm glad I got this instead. I don't like to get into the plot or try to summarise a book too much in recommending it to others, and try to avoid cliches like 'social commentary', 'vivid imagery' and 'imaginitive', but Lanark is all of these and alot more (another cliche, sorry). I'm sure some people wouldn't like the odd separation of the four books that make up the titular 'life', but it's worth getting past this. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

A truly immense book
My words can't even start to convey the enormity of this magnificent novel, one of the landmarks in twentieth century fiction. Just please read it and you'll then understand why Alasdair Gray has a growing legion of fans.

Not for me
As a fan of "experimental fiction" who loves the work of the likes of BS Johnson and Mark Z Danielewski, I decided to read "Lanark" on holiday this year. Sadly it wasn't really my cup of tea.

First of all, it has to be said that the book looks and feels lovely - lavish illustrations (albeit a little explicit on the front, which provoked a few looks around the swimming pool!) on the cover and the title page of each "book", plus the covers are made of a slightly floppy paper so it's actually quite nice to hold for a big book, which makes reading a little easier.

But what of the novel? The four books essentially cover two stories, that of Duncan Thaw (set in Glasgow), and secondly the story of Lanark (set in the fictitious Unthank). When you open the book you'll probably think there has been a binding error as it starts with book three, but this is intentional. Books three and four deal with Lanark, whereas one and two focus on Duncan Thaw, so you effectively have one story within the other. Personally I quite enjoyed the Thaw sections, but I really couldn't warm to the Lanark sections, and sadly these form the greater part of the book. There are parallels between the two narratives, some obvious, some obscure, and maybe I was expecting some triumphant conclusion where it all came together, but sadly this didn't come. Yes, it was very well written, but sadly as a whole it just didn't appeal to me.