Alan Warner is an award-winning Scottish novelist whose works are frequently set in his fictional "The Port." His style is known for its imaginative and surreal black comedy, exploring the unique perspectives of his characters. He crafts rich, atmospheric worlds that draw readers into his narratives. His novels often delve into existential themes while maintaining a distinctive literary voice.
Winner of the James Tait Black Fiction PrizeFor 16-year-old Simon Crimmons there is not a lot to do. Too posh' for the railways, too working class' for Varie, Simon must navigate what it means to be a man as his world is turned upside down.
The Sopranos are back: out of school and out in the world, gathered in Gatwick to plan a super-cheap last-minute holiday reunion. Pitch perfect, darkly comic and brimming with life - in all its squalor, rage, tears and laughter - this is an unforgettable story of female friendship.
The choir from Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls is being bussed to the national finals in the big city. It's an important day for the Sopranos - pub-crawling, shoplifting and body-piercing being their top priorities
"It is off-season in a remote Highland sea port- 21-year-old Morvern Callar, a low-paid employee in the local supermarket, wakes one morning to find her strange boyfriend has committed suicide and is dead on their kitchen floor. Morvern's laconic reaction is both intriguing and immoral. What she does next is even more appalling. . . Brutal, erotic, jarringly poetic and rich in a blood-dark humour, Morvern Callar is a powerful debut novel from a new Scottish writer.
High up in the Conrad Flats that loom bleakly over Acton, two future stars of the literary scene - or so they assume - are hard at work, tapping out words of wit and brilliance between ill-paid jobs writing captions for the Cat Calendar 1985 and blurbs for trashy novels with titles like 'Brothel of the Vampire'. Just 21 but already well entrenched in a life eked out on dole payments, pints and dollops of porridge and pasta, Llewellyn and Cunningham don't have it too bad: a pub on the corner, a misdirected parental allowance, and the delightful company of Aoife, Llewellyn's model fiancee, mother of his young baby - and the woman of Cunningham's increasingly vivid dreams.
An aircrash investigator haunts the hinterlands of an island. A woman makes landfall on the island, and DJ Cormorant is trying to organise a rave on the adjacent airstrip. This work features twisted characters - The Arganout, the Knife Sharpener, The Devil's Advocate and others - converging for one final Saturday night at the Drome Hotel.
In the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Culloden, a lonely figure takes flight with a small band of companions through the mountainous landscapes of the north-west Highlands of Scotland. Award-winning author Alan Warner traces the last journey through Scotland of Bonne Prince Charlie, a man who history will come to define for his failure.
The Seal Club returns with The View From Poacher's Hill, featuring new novellas by Alan Warner, Irvine Welsh and John King. Three literary chums, three more doses of bold contemporary fiction. In Warner's Migration, a reluctant teenager is taken to live on the Costa Blanca by her parents, but despite the villa, pool and palm trees as enjoyed through designer shades, Lily struggles to adapt to her new life in Spain. All is not well in paradise. In Welsh's In Real Life, the dull existence of disenfranchised Edinburgh youths is eased by the more seductive worlds glimpsed on the likes of Instagram. With drugs, porn, junk food and single-parenthood their everyday obsessions, this romping comedy of no manners asks if our onscreen lives can ever compensate for having nothing in real life. Perhaps the dapper Uncle Glen recently returned from Hemel Hempstead has the answer? In King's Grand Union, the arrival by narrowboat of former lorry driver Merlin and his goat Gary attracts a curious crowd
A wistfully charming spin on the classic English Country House novel transposed to the late 70s: comic fiction at its very finest by one of Scotland's most celebrated literary figures