Most Popular Books by James Kelman

Novelist, playwright, essayist, and master of the short story. Artist and engaged working-class intellectual; husband, father, and grandfather as well as committed revolutionary activist. From his first publication (a short story collection An Old Pub Near the Angel on a tiny American press) through his latest novel (God''s Teeth and other Phenomena) and work with Noam Chomsky (Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime—both published on a slightly larger American press), All We Have Is the Story chronicles the life and work—to date—of “Probably the most influential novelist of the post-war period.” (The Times) Drawing deeply on a radical tradition that is simultaneously political, philosophical, cultural, and literary, James Kelman articulates the complexities and tensions of the craft of writing; the narrative voice and grammar; imperialism and language; art and value; solidarity and empathy; class and nation state; and. above all, that it begins and ends with the story. “One of the things the establishment always does is isolate voices of dissent and make them specific—unique if possible. It''s easy to dispense with dissent if you can say there''s him in prose and him in poetry. As soon as you say there''s him, him, and her there, and that guy here and that woman over there, and there''s all these other writers in Africa, and then you''ve got Ireland, the Caribean—suddenly there''s this kind of mass dissent going on, and that becomes something dangerous, something that the establishment won''t want people to relate to and go Christ, you''re doing the same as me. Suddenly there''s a movement going on. It''s fine when it''s all these disparate voices; you can contain that. The first thing to do with dissent is say ‘You''re on your own, you''re a phenomenon.’ I''m not a phenomenon at all: I''m just a part of what''s been happening in prose for a long, long while.” —James Kelman from a 1993 interview

James Kelman, the Man Booker Prize–winning author of How Late It Was, How Late, tells the story of Helen—a sister, a mother, a daughter—a very ordinary young woman. Her boyfriend said she was quirky but she is much more than that. Trust, love, relationships; parents, children, lovers; death, wealth, home: these are the ordinary parts of the everyday that become extraordinary when you think of them as Helen does, each waking hour. Mo Said She Was Quirky begins on Helen’s way home from work, with the strangest of moments when a skinny, down-at-heel man crosses the road in front of her and appears to be her lost brother. What follows is an inspired and absorbing story of twenty-four hours in the life of a young woman.

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 short stories by the Booker Prize-winning Scottish master Giving voice to the dispossessed and crafting stories of lives held in the balance, James Kelman reaches us all. Penetrating deeply into the hearts, minds, and desperation of characters who find themselves in everyday situations—in the hospital, at a bus stop, in a living room with the endless roar of the vacuum cleaner and a distant wife—Kelman follows their streams of consciousness and brings their worries to life. With honesty and dark humor, he confronts the issues of language, class, politics, gender, and age—identity in all its forms.

In the superbly crafted and critically acclaimed You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free, James Kelman has created an unforgettable character and a darkly comic portrait of a post-9/11 America. Jeremiah Brown, a Scottish immigrant in his early thirties, has lived in the United States for twelve years. He has moved as many times, from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again, all in the hope his luck would change. To add to his restlessness and indecision, he now has a nonrefundable ticket to Glasgow--by way of Seattle, Canada, Iceland, and England--to visit his mother. On his last night in the States, Jeremiah finds himself in a town south of Rapid City, moving from bar to bar, attracting and repelling strangers, losing count of the beers he has drunk. All the while he is haunted by memories and by an acute sense of foreboding.

“The world is full of information. What do we do when we get the information, when we have digested the information, what do we do then? Is there a point where ye say, yes, stop, now I shall move on.” James Kelman here offers something of why a book such of this is in front of the public. The State relies on our suffocation, that we cannot hope to learn “the truth.” But whether we can or not is beside “the point.” Finally, there is no “point.” We must grasp the nettle, we assume control and go forward. Kelman says, “I wanted to convey some of that sensibility with the idea of being in conversation with Noam Chomsky, of being in his presence, a sort of seminar. It is not influence. I don’t see it as ‘being influenced’ by Chomsky. He belongs to the great tradition of teaching, of learning. We learn from him through what he does.” At its core, this exhilarating collection of essays, interviews, and correspondence—spanning the years 1988 through 2018, and reaching back a decade or more previous—is about the simple concept that ideas matter. And not only that ideas matter. But that ideas—in this case, through the lens of two engaged intellectuals—mutate, inform, inspire, and ultimately provide more fuel for thought, the actions that follow such thought, and for carrying on, and doing the work.

An award-winning novel of urban boyhood: “No other . . . comes as close as this to Catcher in the Rye.” —The Literary Review A Man Booker Prize–winning author brings us inside the head of a young boy in a novel that offers a “splendid evocation of childhood in mid-20th-century Glasgow” (The Washington Post). Here is the story of a boyhood in a large industrial city during a time of great social change. Kieron grows from age five to early adolescence amid the general trauma of everyday life—the death of a beloved grandparent, the move to a new home. A whole world is brilliantly realized: sectarian football matches; ferryboats on the river; the unfairness of being a younger brother; climbing drainpipes, trees, and roofs; dogs, cats, sex, and ghosts—all rendered in the unmistakable perspective of youth, offering “a vivid reminder that childhood is a foreign country” (Kirkus Reviews). “A book full of the wonder of growing up . . . A magnificent and important novel.” —Financial Times “Recalls the modernist experiments of Joyce and Woolf . . . Kelman is a writer of singular will and sincerity.” —The New York Times Book Review “As an urban coming-of-age, the novel also reminded me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. . . . This funny, sad and deeply entrancing novel works as dreams do: by seduction, by raising strange spirits, and by delivering a world entire. It represents a triumph for Kelman, as hard and uproarious as a Glasgow Saturday night.” —The Washington Post “Kelman’s raw, blunt narration drives home all of Kieron’s loneliness, sadness and feelings of inadequacy. If you can roll with the Scots dialect, the narrative is rewarding, bleak and marvelous.” —Publishers Weekly

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.

Living in a bedsit, just coping with the boredom of being a busconductor, and fully aware that his plans to emigrate to Australia won''t come to anything, Robert Hines is a young Glaswegian leading a pretty drab life. There are compensations, however, in his wife and child, and his eccentric, anarchic imagination. Kelman provides a brilliantly executed, uncompromising slice of Glasgow life – an intelligent, funny and humane novel.

La 4ème de couverture indique : An anonymous narrtor relates accounts of certain incidents and struggles in an unnamed place that appears to be under military rules"

James Kelman''s inimitable voice brings the stories of lost men to light in these twenty-one tales of down on their luck antiheroes who wander, drink, hatch plans, ponder existence, and survive in an unwelcoming and often comic world. Keep Moving and No Questions is a collection of the finest examples of Kelman''s facility with dialog, stream-of-consciousness narrative, and sharp cultural observation. Class is always central in these brief glimpses of men abiding the hands they''ve been dealt. An ideal introduction to Kelman''s work and a wonderful edition for fans and Kelman completists, this lovely volume will make clear why James Kelman is known as the greatest living modernist writer. Five of the stories collected here are brand new, and the rest have been significantly revised by the author for this definitive edition.

James Kelman has made use of the short form all of his writing life, calling on the different traditions where such stories are central within the culture, beginning and ending in freedom, the freedom to create. People should know that their stories count, no matter how personal, how emotional, how eccentric, how trivial, how stupid or how self-centred they may appear. Just make them, and make them your own, in spite of hostility, of negativity, of the threat of punishment: go to it. Language is with the user and you are the user. Make these stories and make them your own.

James Kelman has long been regarded as one of the finest writers of fiction in the world. In this brilliant collection of essays he deals with matters literary, artistic, political and philosophical. In the essay ''"And the Judges Said..."'' Kelman outlines some of the influences that led him to create literary art, from the music he heard as a teenager to American and Russian writers, to the lives of the Impressionists. Elsewhere he looks at the role of elitism in literature, the central importance of Chomsky''s work in 20th century thought and the work of the Caribbean Artists Movement. There are essays on the struggle to save the steel industry in Scotland and on the situation of the Kurds in Turkey; at the core of the collection is an extended essay on Franz Kafka.

''The truth is he didn''t care how long he was going away. Forever would have suited him. It didn''t matter it was America.'' Murdo, a teenager obsessed with music, wishes for a life beyond the constraints of his Scottish island home and dreams of becoming his own man.Tom, battered by loss, stumbles backwards towards the future, terrified of losing his dignity, his control, his son and the last of his family life. Both are in search of something new as they set out on an expedition into the American South. On the road we discover whether the hopes of youth can conquer the fears of age.Dirt Road is a major novel exploring the brevity of life, the agonising demands of love and the lure of the open road. It is also a beautiful book about the power of music and all that it can offer. From the understated serenity of Kelman''s prose - like a Hibernian Carver - emerges a devastating emotional power.

Incendiary and heartrending, the sixteen essays in The State Is the Enemy lay bare government brutality against the working class, immigrants, asylum-seekers, ethnic minorities, and all who are deemed of “a lower order.” Drawing parallels between atrocities committed against the Kurds by the Turkish State, and the racist police brutality, and government sanctioned murders in the UK, James Kelman shatters the myth of Western exceptionalism,revealing the universality of terror campaigns levied against the most vulnerable, and calling on a global citizenship to stand in solidarity with victims of oppression. Kelman’s case against the Turkish and British governments is not just a litany of murders, or an impassioned plea—it is a cool-headed take down of the State and an essential primer for revolutionaries.

"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."

James Kelman''s newest comprehensive guide and reference source is an excellent way to study the history of banking & finance. Beginning with the earliest forms of banking in Mesopotamia and Greece and covering the more recent banking crises of the 20th & 21st Centuries, this easy-to-read guide will help you better understand the role that banking and global finances play in our lives.

"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."

James Kelman - like Kafka or Beckett - is unique to his age: for his refusal to mince words, his ability to present real life without the condescension of `social realism'' and his absolute belief that the language, not literature, makes the culture. Kelman''s landscapes are the wastelands of the inner cities, the tenement blocks, bedsits and doss-houses of Glasgow, Manchester and London, where booze, cards and, sometimes, crime provide the only escape from a no-hope future. This collection of forty-seven stories reflects the huge scope of Kelman''s writing, from 1972 to now: ranging in length from one paragraph to twenty pages, from the concrete to the lyrical, from casual tragedy to wild farce. His only consistencies are his originality and excellence, his ability to give voice to the inarticulate, and his way of creating, out of low life, high art.

Tammas is 20, a loner and a compulsive gambler. Unable to hold a job for long, his life revolves around Glasgow bars, living with his sister and brother-in-law, betting shops, and casinos. Sometimes Tammas wins, more often he loses. But gambling gives him as good a chance as any of discovering what he seeks from life since society offers no prospect of a more fulfilling alternative.

Jack Proctor, a celebrated older writer and curmudgeon, goes off to residency where he is to be an honored part of teaching and giving public readings, he soon finds the atmosphere of the literary world has changed since his last foray into the public sphere. Unknown to most, unable to work on his own writing, surrounded by a host of odd characters, would-be writers, antagonists, handlers, and members of the elite House of Art and Aesthetics, Proctor finds himself driven to distraction (literally in a very very tiny car). This is a story of a man attempting not to go mad when forced to stop his own writing in order to coach others to write. Proctor’s tour of rural places, pubs, theaters, fancy parties, where he is to be headlining as a "Banker-Prize-Winning-Author" reads like a literary version of Spinal Tap. Uproariously funny, brilliantly philosophical, gorgeously written this is James Kelman at his best.

These 35 short stories--most published in this country for the first time--bring to mind, "at various moments, such diverse masterpieces . . . as James Joyce''s "Dubliners" . . . and the parables of Kafka" ("The Village Voice").

Covering a fifteen year period and focusing on the East Wirralarea of Merseyside where esteemed photographer Ken Grant was brought up and still lives, this first book is rooted in autobiography. A region without hold on either manufacturing or industry, its people have for centuries taken casual work as and when it was available, with few guarantees for their future. Responding to the disaffection of this community, to the uneasy sense of dislocation and loss, these photographs capture the essence of lives that are improvised and uncertain. With 60 duotone photos.

In Where I Was, James Kelman introduces us to a superb collection of memorable characters, down on their luck but far from hopeless.

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.

A first collection of plays by James Kelman, whose novel A Disaffection won the 1989 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The plays provide evidence of Kelman''s linguistic craftsmanship, ironic humour and ear for dialogue.

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 dimanche matin à Glasgow, Sammy, un ancien détenu pour vol à l’étalage, se réveille dans une ruelle, chaussé de souliers qui ne lui appartiennent pas, et tente de se rappeler ses deux dernières journées de beuverie. Sauvagement battu par la police, il se retrouve à nouveau en prison et, petit à petit, se découvre complètement aveugle. Les choses empirent encore : sa petite amie disparaît, la police l’interroge pour un crime mystérieux, il erre dans les rues pluvieuses de Glasgow, en tentant vainement de donner un sens au cauchemar qu’est devenue sa vie. Le médecin qu''il finit par consulter refuse d’admettre qu’il est aveugle et sa tentative d’obtenir des indemnités d’invalidité l’amène à se confronter à la bureaucratie kafkaïenne de l''État providence. Le livre est un long flux de conscience où Sammy essaye d’accepter sa cécité, de trouver un secours médical, de comprendre où a disparu sa petite amie et d’échapper à la police qui le croit lié à un type qu’ils soupçonnent de terrorisme politique. Le protagoniste navigue avec un curieux détachement entre ingénuité et acceptation, avec une combinaison de courage et de méfiance qui sonne vrai, de même que certains dialogues entre mettant en scène les diverses autorités, les flics et plus tard son fils adolescent, modèles de rudesse, de tension et d’humour. Ce récit fait d’une prose torrentielle qui ne faiblit jamais, dans le langage non censuré du prolétariat écossais, est une parabole politique subtile et noire sur la lutte et la survie, riche d’ironie et d’humour noir.

Fou de musique, Murdo, seize ans, quitte l''Écosse avec son père pour rendre visite à sa famille dans le sud des États-Unis, une façon de surmonter le deuil de sa mère et de sa sœur, emportées par un cancer à quelques années d''intervalle. Entre deux bus longue distance, il s''égare et tombe sur une répétition improvisée dans un jardin avec des musiciens de zydeco qui l''invitent à jouer avec eux en Louisiane. En attendant, Murdo se réfugie dans sa chambre au sous-sol, échafaude des plans sur des atlas remplis de noms nouveaux et cherche un moyen de rejoindre le grand festival. Avec son père, les relations sont difficiles, marquées par l''incompréhension et la maladresse, malgré tous leurs efforts et l''amour qu''ils se portent. Spécialiste des âmes d''écorchés, Kelman nous embarque ici dans la tête d''un adolescent banal et génial, anxieux et naïf, avec la juste distance et une incroyable tendresse. Un immense roman sur le deuil impossible et la musique qui sauve, et fait entrer la lumière.

Intimate new stories from the Booker Prize-winning James Kelman. He ''brings alive a human consciousness like no other writer can'' ALAN WARNER