Canons
6 total works
An unforgettably imaginative book, deeply experimental in its form and charged with a dark humour, 1982, Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy. Gray's exploration of politics, religion, powerlessness and pornography has lost none of its power to shock and entertain.
Widely recognised as a modern classic, Alasdair Gray's magnum opus was first published in 1981 and immediately established him as one of Britain's leading writers. Comparisons have been made to Dante, Blake, Joyce, Orwell, Kafka, Huxley and Lewis Carroll. This timely new edition should cement his reputation as one of our greatest living writers.
Mungo McGrotty's career in Whitehall is going nowhere. But when he finds the mysterious (and deadly) Harbinger Report, he realises he can blackmail his way to the very top.
This twisted Grayian retelling of the Aladdin story under the Thatcher regime sees our hero rise from pawn to power. But at what cost?
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.
