Simply one of the best and most respected authors of modern times. Be thankful he just can't stop writing. Since 1981, when Alasdair Gray's first novel (Lanark: A Life in Four Books) was published by Canongate, he has published over twenty books, most of them novels and short stories. In his own words, 'Alasdair Gray is a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glaswegian pedestrian who has mainly lived by writing and designing books, most of them fiction.'