Novel
Lanark: A Life in Four Books
Alasdair Gray · 1981
Synopsis
Two alternating stories. In one, Duncan Thaw grows up in Glasgow during and after the war, draws, enters art school, cannot bear any constraint and is unable to love anyone. In the other, a man with no memory arrives by train in a city called Unthank where the sun never rises and where the inhabitants catch diseases that turn them into objects. He has himself called Lanark, becomes involved with a woman, tries to leave the city, and discovers that it is administered.
Context
Thirty years of writing, spanning the whole of the author's youth. The book has four parts published in the order three, one, two, four, with a prologue in the middle and an epilogue four chapters before the end, in which the author appears to argue with his character and to give the list of his own plagiarisms. It was received as the event of a generation: the Glasgow novelists who came after have all said that it showed them that their city could be written.
Who it is for
Six hundred pages in English, translated into French. The construction is disconcerting at first: it is worth knowing in advance that the order of the parts is deliberate.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the most important Scottish novel since the war, and the book invoked by the Glasgow writers who came after.