It is the Swinging Sixties and Kelvin Walker has moved from Scotland to London to make his fortune. Through his wanton ambition, a megalomania surfaces that is unrelieved by his insensitive attempts at friendship and romance. Yet is he all bad, or are the true villains the establishment figures who he tricks and deceives? And, ultimately, does it matter?

Gray's twist on the follies of religion, the media and the imperial British centre is as relevant now as ever.

Bawdy and exuberant * * Guardian * *
A parable, a romp and, as I found, a one-compulsive-sitting read -- MELVYN BRAGG
A necessary genius -- ALI SMITH
One of the brightest intellectual and creative lights Scotland has known in modern times -- NICOLA STURGEON
Gray is a true original, a twentieth century William Blake * * Observer * *
The best Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott -- ANTHONY BURGESS
One of the most gifted writers to have put pen to paper in the English language -- IRVINE WELSH
Gray transformed our expectations of what Scottish literature could be -- VAL McDERMID

Born in 1934, Alasdair Gray graduated in design and mural painting from the Glasgow School of Art. Since 1981, when Lanark was published by Canongate, he authored, designed and illustrated seven novels, several books of short stories, a collection of his stage, radio and TV plays and a book of his visual art, A Life in Pictures. In November 2019, he received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Saltire Society. He died in December 2019, aged eighty-five.