- Indelible Ink : Alasdair Gray’s ‘Lanark’ How do I begin to sum up Alasdair Gray? Writer of fiction and non-fiction, painter, illustrator, dramatist, poet, cultural and political commentator, and even, as part of the ‘Ballad of the Books’ project, songwriter. Most people would be happy to have mastered one of these things. Alasdair Gray is not most people. And ‘Lanark’ is […]
- Indelible Ink : Buddha Da If I was to recommend a Scottish book to you that is based on religion you may rightly have some preconceptions as to what it would be like. It may be a generalisation but Scotland and religion tend to mix like oil and water, or perhaps oil and fire is a better example. Many of […]
- Indelible Ink : The Wasp Factory Sometimes a writer comes along who is difficult to categorise, who doesn’t fit easily into any genre. Iain Banks is one such writer. Of course as Iain M. Banks, his other writing title, he is an out and out sci-fi novelist, but even that isn’t as clear cut as it at first appears.
- Indelible Ink : Kill Your Friends Rarely can an epigraph have summed up the novel to come better than the Hunter S. Thompson quote that appears before John Niven’s 2008 novel ‘Kill Your Friends’. It reads as follows: ‘The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men […]
- Indelible Ink : Be Near Me Andrew O’Hagan’s Booker nominated 2006 novel Be Near Me tackles themes which are common in modern Scottish literature, but in a manner which is very much of his own styling. Religion, politics, bigotry, class, nationality and sexuality are explored in the novel but with a more considered eye than many of his contemporaries. There is […]
- Indelible Ink : Morvern Callar In the first of his monthly columns on Scottish Literature, Alistair Braidwood takes a closer look at ‘Morvern Callar’ by Alan Warner, the 1995 novel that was later made into a film by Lynne Ramsay. Next month Alistair will examine Andrew O’Hagan’s ‘Be Near Me’.
- Indelible Ink: A new monthly column by Alistair Braidwood There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more… You rarely hear the question asked; ‘What is Scottish music?’ or ‘What is Scottish film?’ The same goes for theatre, painting, or even comedy. In all these examples the question of their Scottishness or otherwise has long since mattered less than the argument […]
