Rejected by his brother and largely ignored by his parents, Kieron Smith finds comfort - and endless stories - in the home of his much-loved grandparents. But when his family move to a new housing scheme on the outskirts of Glasgow, a world away from the close community of the tenements, Kieron struggles to find a way to adapt to his new life. Kieron Smith, boy is a brilliant evocation of an urban childhood. Capturing the joys, frustrations, injustices, excitements, revels, battles, games, uncertainties, questions, lies, discoveries and sheer of wonder of boyhood, it is a story of one boy and every boy. It is James Kelman at his very best.

Prizes

Winner of Scottish Book of the Year Award 2009 and Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award 2008.

'Magnificent and important ... might just be Kelman's greatest achievement to date' - Irvine Welsh, Financial Times 'A vibrant, beautiful portrait of childhood ' The Times 'I have read no other depiction of the inner life of a boy that comes as close as this to The Catcher in the Rye ' Literary Review

James Kelman was born in Glasgow in 1946. His books include Greyhound for Breakfast, A Disaffection, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and How Late it Was, How Late, which won the 1994 Booker Prize. His more recent novels are Translated Accounts and You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free.