Every Short Story By Alasdair Gray 1951 2012

The first sixteen tales in this collection were published by Canongate in 1983 with the title Unlikely Stories, Mostly. This collection also has fifty-seven tales from later books, plus sixteen new ones written for the hardback publication of this collection. This last section, Tales Droll and Plausible, shows that Gray's recent twenty-first-century fiction is as uncomfortably funny and up to date as his earliest.

The first sixteen tales in this collection were published by Canongate in 1983 with the title Unlikely Stories, Mostly. This collection also has fifty-seven tales from later books, plus sixteen new ones written for the hardback publication of this collection. This last section, Tales Droll and Plausible, shows that Gray's recent twenty-first-century fiction is as uncomfortably funny and up to date as his earliest.

This novel is a work of extraordinary imagination and wide range. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying.

Alasdair Gray's first book of short stories is a masterful collection that further established him as one of Scotland's most original writers. This edition marks the first appearance by Gray in the Canongate Classics list.

An authoritative collection of Alasdair Gray's stories gathered over the last twenty five years.

Basis for the Major Motion Picture starring Emma Stone, Ramy Youssef, Mark Ruffalo, and Willem Dafoe, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. "Witty and delightfully written" (New York Times Book Review), Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things echoes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in this novel of a young woman freeing herself from the confines of the suffocating Victorian society she was created to serve. Winner of the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize In the 1880s in Glasgow, Scotland, medical student Archibald McCandless finds himself enchanted with the intriguing creature known as Bella Baxter. Supposedly the product of the fiendish scientist Godwin Baxter, Bella was resurrected for the sole purpose of fulfilling the whims of her benefactor. As his desire turns to obsession, Archibald’s motives to free Bella are revealed to be as selfish as Godwin’s, who claims her body and soul. But Bella has her own passions to pursue. Passions that take her to aristocratic casinos, low-life Alexandria, and a Parisian bordello, reaching an interrupted climax in a Scottish church. Exploring her station as a woman in the shadow of the patriarchy, Bella knows it is up to her to free herself—and to decide what meaning, if any, true love has in her life. “Gray has the look of a latter-day William Blake, with his extravagant myth-making, his strong social conscience, his liberating vision of sexuality and his flashes of righteous indignation tempered with scathing wit and sly self-mockery.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “This work of inspired lunacy effectively skewers class snobbery, British imperialism, prudishness and the tenets of received wisdom.”—Publishers Weekly

'Grandly conceived, gorgeously realised, and sparklingly alert to the making not just of works of art, but of a language, this crammed compendium, so copiously yet lightly learned, so drolly self-reflexive, yet enticingly accessible, so exhilaratingly, quixotically magniloquent, is the last word in forewords.' Herald