Alasdair Gray

Uncommon card · No. 139430

Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards. Utilising a postmodern writing style, Gray's works have been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino; and often contain extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced them. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, A. L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Chris Kelso and Iain Banks. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is considered a landmark of Scottish fiction; in a 2016 public poll by the BBC, it was named the third-best Scottish novel of all time. He was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow from 1977 to 1979 and a...

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