Alasdair Gray

Frightening and downright filthy: why everyone must read Alasdair Gray

Critic Sarah Ditum explains the appeal of the late author, who pulled apart sex and masculinity in superb works such as the epic Lanark

 Alasdair Gray, influential Scottish writer and artist, dies aged 85

Sarah Ditum
Monday 30 December 2019

W

hen I read Lanark, it felt as if it was my discovery. Obviously it was not: Alasdair Gray’s novel had been in the world for 23 years by then. (It arrived, like me, in 1981.) But Lanark is so entirely surprising that any first encounter with it is an encounter with the new. It is the kind of book that could look like proof of madness if it had never been published, a 600-page epic with elaborate illustrations (by Gray) and idiosyncratic typesetting, interlacing realist sections set in Glasgow with satirical fantasy set in a parallel city called Unthank, written in four books and starting with book three.