Alasdair Gray (born December 28, 1934) is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years, which is now regarded as a cult classic. His novel Poor Things (1992) won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award.National Library of Scotland

Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision",Moores ed. Alasdair Gray: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography (2001) p. 4. and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian".Gray, The Ends of Our Tethers, Dustjacket (recto).

Life

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Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow. His father had been wounded in the First World War and worked at the time in a factory, while his mother worked in a shop. During the Second World War, Gray was evacuated to Perthshire and then Lanarkshire, experiences which he drew on in his later fiction. The family lived on a council estate, and Gray received his education from a combination of state education, public libraries and public service broadcasting: "the kind of education British governments now consider useless, especially for British working class children", as he later commented. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957, and taught there from 1958 to 1962. It was as a student that he first began what would become the novel Lanark.

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