From its first publication in 1981, Lanark by Alasdair Gray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_Gray and http://www.alasdairgray.co.uk/) was hailed as a masterpiece and it has come to be widely regarded as the most remarkable and influential Scottish novel of the second half of the twentieth century.
A work of extraordinary imagination and wide-ranging concerns, its playful narrative conveys at its core a profound message. This is about humankind’s inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying. It paints a modern vision of hell, and is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow. The structure of the work is of a small naturalistic novel embedded in a large eclectic one. With its echoes of Dante, Blake, Joyce, Kafka, and Lewis Carroll, Lanark has been published all over the world to unanimous acclaim.
592 pages in Canongate Books paperback edition
ISBN 978-1841959078
Alasdair Gray