LANARK
a life in four books

Hardcover: [592 pages] £14.99
Also available as Ebook £9.98
Publisher : Canongate Books
ISBN-10 : 1838852905
ISBN-13 : 978-1838852900

‘Probably the greatest novel of the century’ Observer

Lanark, a modern vision of hell set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination, its playful narrative conveys a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind’s inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying.

First published in 1981, Lanark established Alasdair Gray as one of Britain’s leading writers and kick-started the modern renaissance of Scottish literature.

DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY
This Trilogy is Englished in prosaic verse and illustrated by Alasdair Gray

Hell Book 1
Hardcover: [144 pages] £10.85
Also available as Ebook £8.69
Publisher : Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781786892539

One of the masterpieces of world literature, completed in 1320, Dante's La Divina Commedia describes his journey through Hell, Purgatory and his eventual arrival in Heaven.

In this new version of Dante's masterpiece, Alasdair Gray offers an original translation in prosaic English rhyme.

Accessible, modern and sublimely decorated, this remarkable edition told in three parts yokes two great literary minds, seven hundred years apart, and brings the classic text alive for the twenty-first century.

Purgatory Book 2
Hardcover: [144 pages] £10.99
Also available as Ebook £10.44
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781786894731

Dante and his guide, the poet Virgil, must enter and traverse Purgatory and the seven deadly sins in their quest to reach Heaven.

In this colloquial version of Dante's masterpiece, Gray offers an original translation in his own unique idiom. Lyrical and modern, Gray brings this classic text alive for a modern readership..

Paradise Book 3
Hardcover: [144 pages] £13.99
Main Edition published 5 Nov. 2020
Also available as Ebook £8.69
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781786894748

Dante, now guided by Beatrice, faces the final third of his epic journey through the wheels of divine justice. Yet as he passes through the spheres of Heaven, he struggles with his faith, striving to understand the scales of good and evil that determine the fate of a human soul.

Published posthumously Paradise is the final book from the pencil of Alasdair Gray; it is the final instalment of his masterful retelling of Dante's trilogy.

This is a fitting conclusion to the profound body of work Gray leaves behind him.

Of Me and Others
Paperback: [144 pages] £17.99
Also available as Ebook £15.19
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781786895202

In this frank, playful and typically unorthodox collection of essays, Alasdair Gray tells how his early life experiences influenced his writing, including the creation of those landmarks of literature, Lanark and 1982, Janine. He details the inspirations behind his many acclaimed artworks and murals, and makes clear how his moral, social and political beliefs and his work are inextricably linked.
Incisive, funny and fired with passion, Of Me and Others is as much about people, place and politics as it is about Gray's own life in art

EVERY SHORT STORY: 1951-2012
Hardback £30 934 pages
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780857865601
Also available in Ebook £20
ISBN: 9780857865625

Sixty-four short tales from Gray's earlier books are here joined with sixteen new stories, with illustrations and information to amuse curious readers.

One of the most gifted writers to have put pen to paper in the English language.', Irvine Welsh

'Gray is a true original, a twentieth century William Blake.', Observer

A LIFE IN PICTURES
Hardcover: 303 pages
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (7 Oct 2010)
ISBN-10: 1841956406
ISBN-13: 978-1841956404

Buy f rom Amazon UK

Alasdair Gray is known throughout the world for his writing, but he is also a highly regarded artist who not only illustrates and designs his own books, but has created many beautiful and intriguing portraits, paintings, posters and murals. Alasdair started painting and writing from an early age, and in his seventies he's still vigorously doing both. In this autopictography he gathers together the work that has mattered most to him over the years, and weaves the story of his life through and around these pictures in his own unmistakable style. A beautifully and copiously illustrated book, designed by himself, this is life as seen by one of the millennium's most entertaining and wry creative geniuses.

Click Here: to view some of alasdair's Paintings and Drawings

SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION:
A LIFE IN PICTURES
by Alasdair Gray.

While the content of the book remains the same as the published version, this special limited edition of 100 has newly designed endpapers which are illustrated by Alasdair and personally numbered by him. This special edition of the book is contained within a Solander Box also designed and illustrated by Alasdair. All proceeds from sales of this special limited edition will go to fund the work of Save the Small Tribes Trust. A charity close to Alasdair's heart. Click here for more information.

A GRAY PLAYBOOK
of Shows by
Alasdair Gray
1956-2009

A Gray Play Book of long and short plays for stage, puppet-theatre, radio and television, acted between 1956 and 2009, with an unused opera libretto, a film script of the novel Poor Things and excerpts from the pictorial storyboard of the novel Lanark by Alasdair Gray

(Deluxe edition) Hardback, 336 pps, price £50.00
Order online at Luath Press (link leaves this site)

This collection brings together some of Alasdair Gray's best plays. For the first time ever 22 of his works (stage plays, radio scripts and film and television scripts) have been gathered together in one significant volume. This exciting work includes the unabridged scripts of four of his most famous dramas: The Fall of Kelvin Walker (1967), Mavis Belfridge (1968), McGrotty and Ludmilla (1975) and Working Legs (1997), ‘A Play for People Without Them’. These are combined with four one-act sexual comedies written in the '60s and '70s; The Loss of Golden Silence, Dialogue, Homeward Bound and Sand Lang and Miss Watson.

A GRAY PLAYBOOK
of Shows by
Alasdair Gray
1956-2009

Paperback, 336 pps, price £25.00
Order online at Luath Press (link leaves this site)

A Gray Play Book follows the creation of the playwright genius from his first work, written at age 11, to the 2008 one-act play Voices in the Dark. Plus an intriguing glimpse at the, as yet unmade, Lanark movie with sections of the original storyboard.
The essential gift for all the fans of Alasdair Gray and his work.

Click image to buy book

FLECK: a verse comedy
Alasdair Gray

Format: Paoerback, 216x138mm
ISBN: 9781906120375
Published: October 2008
RRP: £8.99

Direct from publisher: £6.99

In 2007 Alasdair Gray began writing a modern verse translation of Goethe’s Tragedy of Faust, and after the first act found the Devil lead the hero into a twenty-first century Goethe never imagined. This required a change of names, so the play is now Fleck, a comedy.

'Gray's representation of God sums up what makes this, another in a long list of Faust-inspired texts, worth a look. Gray's wry irreverence is in full and pungent flow. With a torture scene involving an episode of 'The Simpsons' and a speech interrupted by mobile phones, he achieves what he wants to by dragging Faust into the 21st century. It has lights and music and molls and liquor and, though it verges on the brassy cabaret side of things, in turning Faust the tragedy into Fleck the comedy, he succeeds in paying his own delirious, wholly un-Goethean tribute.'
...........................................................Scotland on Sunday

Alasdair Gray's latest novel,
OLD MEN IN LOVE

Format: Hardback, 320 pages, 234x153mm
Published: October 2007

ISBN: 9780747593539

Alasdair Gray's latest novel in paperback,
OLD MEN IN LOVE

Format: Paperback, 320 pages, 234x153mm
Published: October 2009

Men in Love, like The Arabian Nights, is about a storyteller whose stories contain other stories. As in Alasdair Gray's Lanark, 1982 Janine, Poor Things, and The Book of Prefaces, this one has many styles of narrative and location. Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Victorian Somerset mingle with Britain under the New Labour Party, viewed from the West End of Glasgow. More than 50% is fact and the rest possible, but must be read to be believed.

Reviews of Old Men in Love:

'The greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott' Anthony Burgess

'Alasdair Gray’s new novel, Old Men in Love, exhibits all of those faintly preposterous foibles that make him a writer more loved than prized. The bulk of the text constitutes the posthumous papers of a recondite – yet venal – retired Glaswegian schoolmaster, named John Tunnock (as in the celebrated tea cake), that have, seemingly, been edited and collated by Gray himself.

'This literary subterfuge serves to fool no one who needs fooling, yet will satisfy all who believe that the truth can be found more exactly in chance occurrences, serendipity, and the eggy scrapings from the breakfast plates of the neglected, than any crude, linear naturalism.
'Tunnock is a beguiling figure, at once feisty and fusty. His historical fictions chivvy us into Periclean Athens, Renaissance Italy and then bury our noses in the ordure of sanctity given off by charismatic Victorian religious sectaries. Excursions into geological time are placed in counterpoint to diaristic jottings describing Tunnock’s own erotic misadventures and the millennial trivia of the Anthony Linton Blair Government’s final five years.
'Only Gray can be fecklessly sexy as well as insidiously sagacious. Only Gray can beguile quite so limpidly. If I were a Hollywood screenwriter (which, to the best of my knowledge, I am not), I would pitch the film adaptation of Old Men in Love thus: ‘Imagine Lanark meets Something Leather, with a kind of a Poor Things feel to it …’ By this I mean to convey to this novel’s readers that Alasdair Gray remains, first and foremost, entirely sui generis. He’s the very best Alasdair Gray that we have, and we should cherish his works accordingly.'

– Will Self

Also available from Bloomsbury Publishing
Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography
by Rodge Glass,
H/B, 352 pages, RRP: £25.00

ISBN: 9780747590156

Order today from Bloomsbury Link leaves this site (available within 48 hours).

Alasdair Gray was not always the rapidly ageing, fat Glasgow pedestrian he likes to describe on the inside leaf of his books. There was once a time when he was young; a time when he was really rather thin; many years when he went unpublished and unrecognised.
This book aims to document, as faithfully as possible, that journey from son of a box-maker, encouraged to paint, write and do whatever made him feel good, to septuagenarian "little grey deity"; (as Will Self has called him).