New Releases by James Kelman

Robert Hines est un jeune employé de bus de Glasgow, il rêve de devenir conducteur mais aux yeux des inspecteurs de la compagnie, il est trop original, il a trop de mal à se plier aux règles, aux horaires. Confronté à un quotidien " désastreux et étrangement banal ", il n''y survit que grâce à son amour pour sa femme et son fils et une imagination magnifiquement anarchique. Dans ce roman drôle, intelligent et réellement original, James Kelman met en scène avec une verve et un humour sans complaisance le dur milieu ouvrier de Glasgow : la religion, le foot, l''alcool, les copains, la pesanteur aliénante des réunions enfumées... Il décrit une vie de travailleur, sans héroïsme, simplement humaine, en créant un personnage attachant et inoubliable.

This collection of 35 short stories—most of them being published in this country for the first time—has been selected and arranged by James Kelman himself from over two decades of his work. The stories of Busted Scotch are set in the working-class milieu of Scotland and England—the pubs, betting shops, tenements, bedrooms, snooker parlors, and decaying industrial workplaces. They range widely in length from a few paragraphs to twenty-plus pages, in style from the deceptively offhand to the highly farcical, and in subject matter from the casual everyday tragedies to the heartbreaking vicissitudes of romance and language.

Stories about the Scottish working class. In Pulped Sandwiches, construction workers discuss death, Oh My Darling is on a husband who indulges in pawing his wife in public, while in I Was Asking a Question Too, a man plasters the walls of his apartment with wise sayings from books.

Winner of the Booker Prize. "A work of marvelous vibrance and richness of character." "New York Times" Book Review

A collection of 47 short stories which reflect the broad scope of Kelman''s writing since 1972. Ranging from casual tragedy to wild farce, from the concrete to the lyrical, the book aims to demonstrate Kelman''s way of creating high art from low life.

Na zijn vrijlating uit de gevangenis wordt een Engelsman blind als gevolg van een incident met de politie, wat echter moeilijk te bewijzen is.

"The characters in THE BURN are tense, wound up, tight as a drum. Relationships are collapsing, communications are breaking down and events are spinning out of control. Passionate, exhilarating and darkly funny, THE BURN is an extraordinary book by a master of paranoia and a prose of genius."

In this collection of essays, polemics and talks, Kelman directs his linguistic craftsmanship and scathing humor at targets ranging from private profit and public loss to the endemic racism, class bias and general elitism at the English end of the Anglo-American literary tradition.

This is James Kelman''s first collection of short stories - as fresh and sharp as when they first appeared from US publisher "Puckerbrush Press". Set among the tenements and bedsits of Glasgow, they shine a light on the exploits of young and old. James Kelman had been writing since about 1967 and by 1971 had enough stories for a book. In 1973, "An Old Pub Near The Angel" was published and the rest is history. The US edition has never been out of print. -- Amazon.com.

Un desafecto plasma el mundo de Patrick Doyle, un profesor de secundaria de Glasgow próximo a la treintena, en cuadros que describen una semana de su vida en crisis. Pero la crisis de Patrick no es sólo la crisis de los treinta.

Patrick Doyle is a 29-year-old teacher in an ordinary school. Disaffected, frustrated, and increasingly bitter at the system he is employed to maintain, Patrick begins his rebellion, fuelled by drink and his passionate, unrequited love for a fellow teacher. This is an apparently straightforward story of one week in a man''s life in which he decides to change the way he lives. Under the surface, however, lies a brilliant and complex examination of class, human culture, and character written with irony, tenderness, enormous anger, and, above all, the honesty that has marked James Kelman as one of the most important writers in contemporary Britain.

"NOT NOT WHILE THE GIRO is James Kelman''s first major collection of short storeis, and takes the reader from the pub to the Labour Exchange, from the snooker tables to the greyhound track. Written with irony, tenderness and enormous anger, the book confirms James Kelman''s stature as one of the most important writers of and in contemporary Britain."

Tammas is twenty, a loner and a compulsive gambler. Unable to hold a job for long, his life revolves around Glasgow bars, home with his sister and brother-in-law, the dog track, betting shops, casinos and occasionally a day at the races. Sometimes Tammy wins, more often he loses, but betting gives him as good a chance as any of discovering what he really seeks from life since society offers him no prospect of a better or more fulfilling altenative.

Appeal regarding change of use from shop to licensed betting office.