Author Guide · Scottish fiction
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Alasdair Gray was a Scottish novelist, poet, and visual artist — one of the most original literary minds that Scotland has produced. Born in Glasgow in 1934, he spent nearly thirty years writing his first novel, Lanark, while also painting murals across the city. His books are difficult to categorise: they mix realism, satire, science fiction, body horror, feminist revisionism, and formal experimentation in ways that feel like nothing else. He died on 29 December 2019, one day after his eighty-fifth birthday.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 books of fiction · Costa Book Awards · Books like Poor Things · 1981–2012 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Alasdair Gray wrote seven novels, one novella and five books of stories, as well as poetry, political pamphlets and a verse translation of Dante. The two people usually arrive at are Lanark (1981), his masterpiece, and Poor Things (1992), which won the Whitbread Novel Award and is the novel behind Yorgos Lanthimos’s Oscar-winning 2023 film. Below: everything he published as fiction, in order, plus the books outside it.
Where to Start with Alasdair Gray
If you want the masterpiece
→ Lanark. Long, strange and out of order, and the book everyone means when they call Gray a great novelist.
If you want the one you have heard of
→ Poor Things. Short, funny, and the source of the 2023 film — though the film leaves Glasgow behind.
If you want to see what he could do in ten pages
→ Unlikely Stories, Mostly. Or the whole of Every Short Story if you are in for the long haul.
Alasdair Gray Novels in Order
Seven novels and one novella, oldest first.
Lanark
Start hereA Life in Four Books
Two lives, told in four books printed out of order. Duncan Thaw is an asthmatic art student growing up in wartime and post-war Glasgow who fails as a painter; Lanark arrives with no memory in Unthank, a sunless city where people grow “dragonhide” when they cannot feel. Near the end, Lanark meets his own author.
In the 2016 poll of Scotland’s favourite books, run by BBC Scotland with the Scottish Book Trust, it came third, behind Sunset Song and The Wasp Factory. Anthony Burgess called Gray the best Scottish novelist since Walter Scott.
— Lisanne1982, Janine
Jock McLeish, divorced, alcoholic and nearly fifty, spends one night in a Scottish hotel room inventing pornographic fantasies about women who keep turning back into his own past. In chapter eleven the page splits into parallel voices, one of them God’s, while he takes an overdose.
The most divisive book he wrote: the poet Peter Levi called it “radioactive hogwash”, while Will Self later introduced an edition defending it. Gray himself thought it his best book.
— LisanneThe Fall of Kelvin Walker
Kelvin leaves a small Scottish town, throws off a strict Calvinist upbringing and talks his way into London television in the 1960s, where nerve alone makes him a star interviewer. Then it comes apart and he goes home.
It began life as a BBC television play in 1968, seventeen years before the novel.
— LisanneSomething Leather
June, a conventional office worker in Glasgow, has her head shaved, is dressed in leather and is drawn into the world of the women who run a leather shop. Around that sit chapters about other Glasgow lives, and an epilogue in which Gray answers his critics.
Gray complained that reviewers read the whole book as a sadomasochistic adventure when that material fills two of its chapters.
— LisanneMcGrotty and Ludmilla
Aladdin moved to Whitehall: a junior civil servant gets hold of a secret government report, and the report is the magic lamp. A short, poisonous comedy about how power is actually handed over.
Gray described it exactly that way himself, as an Aladdin story with a wicked uncle in the senior civil service.
— LisannePoor Things
On my bookshelfIn late nineteenth-century Glasgow, the surgeon Godwin Baxter revives a drowned pregnant woman by giving her the brain of her own unborn child. She becomes Bella Baxter, who learns the world at speed and refuses to be told what she is. The novel is built as found documents, and Bella’s own letter at the end says the man who wrote the rest of it made most of it up.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 film won four Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Emma Stone, and moved the story out of Glasgow into a retrofuturist London.
— LisanneA History Maker
Twenty-third-century Scotland, in the Ettrick borders, after technology has made everything abundant and capitalism unnecessary. Women hold the real power; men win status in ritual clan warfare. Wat Dryhope, a celebrated war hero, is pulled into a plot to bring capitalism back by starting a real war.
The most science-fictional of his novels, and the one that most directly argues with the politics of the 1990s.
— LisanneOld Men in Love
The posthumous papers of John Tunnock, a retired Glasgow schoolmaster, edited by a character called Alasdair Gray. Tunnock’s unfinished trilogy jumps between the Athens of Socrates, the Florence of Fra Lippo Lippi and a Victorian cult leader, with the diary of an old man in Glasgow running underneath.
His last novel, published when he was seventy-two, with an afterword by Sidney Workman, the fictional critic who had been attacking Gray’s books since Lanark.
— LisanneAlasdair Gray Short Story Collections in Order
Unlikely Stories, Mostly
Fables, satires and philosophical jokes, some written decades before they were published: a boy who swallows a fallen star, a court poet in an empire that declares people unnecessary, and two stories about a tower meant to reach heaven.
The book carries the line he is now best known for: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation”, which he adapted from the Canadian poet Dennis Lee. It is engraved in the Scottish Parliament.
— LisanneLean Tales
A three-way collection with James Kelman and Agnes Owens: Gray wanted to publish his own stories, did not have enough of them, and asked two friends to fill the book.
It put the three writers who reshaped Scottish fiction in the 1980s between the same covers, with Gray designing the book.
— LisanneTen Tales Tall & True
Ten stories in contemporary Scotland, moving between social realism, comedy, science fiction and satire, mostly about people looking for someone to dominate or to be dominated by.
The cover shows ten animal tails; each animal turns up in one of the stories.
— LisanneMavis Belfrage
A Romantic Novel, with Five Shorter Tales
The title story follows an Anglo-Scottish relationship and the quiet power struggle inside it, and is printed with five shorter tales.
Filed by libraries as a novel, but the subtitle says what it really is.
— LisanneThe Ends of Our Tethers
13 Sorry Stories
Thirteen late stories about irritation, decline and old age, from a writer then in his late sixties, still changing form from story to story.
His last original collection.
— LisanneEvery Short Story
1951–2012
Everything, in one 934-page volume: Unlikely Stories, Mostly, his half of Lean Tales, Ten Tales Tall & True, The Ends of Our Tethers, the Glasgow chapters of Something Leather, and the uncollected work.
The hardback is stamped with a variant of his famous line: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better world.”
— LisanneIn What Order to Read Alasdair Gray
There is no series to follow. Every book stands alone, so the order is about how much of him you want at once.
Start with Poor Things or Unlikely Stories, Mostly. Both are short, funny and show his habit of building a book out of documents, footnotes and his own drawings.
Then Lanark. Read it once you know you like him: it is long, and it starts with Book Three.
After that, 1982, Janine if you can take it, and A History Maker if you want his politics in science-fiction form.
If you came from the film, my books like Poor Things list goes further.
Alasdair Gray on Screen and Stage
One Alasdair Gray novel has been filmed, and it won more than anything else he wrote ever did.
- 2023 · Poor Things — Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, with Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, Willem Dafoe as Godwin Baxter and Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn. It won four Academy Awards in March 2024 — Best Actress, Production Design, Costume Design, and Makeup and Hairstyling — after the Golden Lion at Venice in 2023. Gray died four years before it came out.
- 2015 · Lanark on stage — Never filmed. Lanark: A Life in Three Acts, adapted by David Greig for the Citizens Theatre, opened at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2015.
Beyond Fiction: The Rest of the Shelf
Gray wrote, illustrated and designed more than thirty books. These are the ones outside the fiction that readers ask about most.
Why Scots Should Rule Scotland · 1992, revised 1997
A political pamphlet, rewritten for the year of the devolution referendum.
Bookshop.org and more
How We Should Rule Ourselves · 2005
Written with the constitutional lawyer Adam Tomkins, on what a Scottish parliament could actually be for.
Bookshop.org and more
The Book of Prefaces · 2000
Sixteen years in the making: an anthology of prefaces in English, edited, annotated and designed by Gray.
Bookshop.org and more
A Life in Pictures · 2010
His autobiography told in words and his own images, from the murals to the book covers.
Bookshop.org and more
Of Me & Others · 2014
A later autobiography, in essays.
Bookshop.org and more
Dante’s Divine Trilogy · 2018–2020
Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, “Englished in prosaic verse”. Paradise appeared after his death; the three were collected in 2022. It was his last creative work.
Bookshop.org and more
The years · 1934–2019
Quick facts about Alasdair Gray
- Known for
- Turning Glasgow into a place of myth in Lanark and Poor Things, books he wrote, illustrated and designed himself, and a line about a better nation now carved into the Scottish Parliament
- 1934
- Born in Riddrie, Glasgow
- 1952
- Enters Glasgow School of Art
- 1981
- Lanark, after nearly thirty years
- 1992
- Poor Things
- 2019
- Dies in Glasgow, aged 85
- Also a painter
- Murals at Òran Mór, the Ubiquitous Chip and Hillhead subway station
- Prizes
- Whitbread Novel Award and Guardian Fiction Prize for Poor Things (1992); Saltire Lifetime Achievement Award (2019)
- Fiction
- Seven novels, one novella and five books of stories, 1981 to 2012
- On screen
- Poor Things (2023), four Academy Awards
The red mark is 1981: Lanark, published when he was forty-six, after nearly thirty years of writing it.
How Alasdair Gray Wrote
He made the whole book. Gray designed his own covers, endpapers and typography and drew the illustrations, so his books look like nothing else on the shelf. The pictures are part of the story, not decoration.
Fake editors and found papers. Poor Things is presented as documents Gray merely edited, and Old Men in Love as a dead schoolmaster’s papers. The books argue with themselves, and the reader has to decide whom to believe.
Glasgow as an imagined city. He wrote Glasgow at a time when it barely existed in serious fiction, and turned it into Unthank in Lanark: the real city and a nightmare version of it, side by side.
Watch
Alasdair Gray reads from Lanark
Gray reads one of the few happy passages in Lanark, then tells his sister why so much of the book is miserable.
Frequently asked questions about Alasdair Gray
Which Oscar-winning film is based on an Alasdair Gray novel?
Poor Things. Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 film is based on Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name and won four Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Emma Stone. The novel is set in Glasgow; the film is not.
What was Alasdair Gray’s first book?
Lanark: A Life in Four Books, published in 1981, when he was forty-six. He had been writing it for nearly thirty years. His first published story, “The Star”, appeared in 1951, when he was still a teenager, and was collected in Unlikely Stories, Mostly in 1983.
Is it Alasdair Gray or Alastair Gray?
Alasdair Gray, with an s and no t, and Gray with an a. Alastair, Alistair, Alisdair and Grey are all common misspellings of the Scottish novelist who wrote Lanark and Poor Things.
How many books did Alasdair Gray write?
As fiction: seven novels, one novella and five collections of stories, counting the 2012 omnibus. He also wrote poetry, plays, political pamphlets, two autobiographies, an anthology of prefaces and a verse translation of Dante, and he illustrated and designed nearly all of them himself.
Which Alasdair Gray book should I read first?
If you want the book his publisher and his critics lead with, Lanark. If you want something shorter and funnier, Poor Things. Both are on this page, with everything else he wrote.
Is the film Poor Things based on a book?
Yes. Poor Things was published in 1992, thirty-one years before Yorgos Lanthimos’s film. The novel is set in Glasgow and is built out of contradictory documents; the film moves it to an invented London and drops the Scottish setting.
What is Lanark about?
Two lives that turn out to be one: Duncan Thaw, an art student in post-war Glasgow, and Lanark, who arrives without a memory in a sunless city called Unthank. The four books are printed in the order three, one, two, four.
Did Alasdair Gray win any prizes?
Lanark won the Saltire Society Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year; Unlikely Stories, Mostly won the Cheltenham Prize in 1983; Poor Things won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1992. He received the Saltire Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Was Alasdair Gray an artist as well as a writer?
He trained as a muralist at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957 and painted murals all his life. Several survive, including the ceiling of Òran Mór on Byres Road, the walls of the Ubiquitous Chip, and the ceramic mural at Hillhead subway station, unveiled in 2012.
Where does “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation” come from?
From Gray, who adapted it from the Canadian poet Dennis Lee and used it in Unlikely Stories, Mostly in 1983. It is now engraved in the Scottish Parliament building.
Footnotes
- Alasdair Gray bibliography — Wikipedia
- Lanark: A Life in Four Books — Wikipedia (Saltire and Scottish Arts Council awards)
- Poor Things — Wikipedia (Whitbread Novel Award and Guardian Fiction Prize, 1992)
- Poor Things (film) — Wikipedia (four Academy Awards, 2024)
- Golden Lion film Poor Things wins four Oscars — La Biennale di Venezia
- Unlikely Stories, Mostly — Wikipedia (Cheltenham Prize, 1983; the better nation line)
- 1982, Janine — Wikipedia (the reception, and Gray on his own book)
- The Fall of Kelvin Walker — Wikipedia (the 1968 television play)
- Something Leather — Wikipedia
- Old Men in Love — Wikipedia
- Lean Tales — Wikipedia (with James Kelman and Agnes Owens)
- The Ends of Our Tethers — Canongate
- How We Should Rule Ourselves (with Adam Tomkins, 2005) — Canongate
- Every Short Story 1951–2012 — The Bottle Imp
- Dante’s Divine Trilogy — The Alasdair Gray Archive
- Alasdair Gray, author and artist, has died aged 85 — Canongate
- Obituary: Alasdair Gray — The Scotsman
- Sunset Song named Scotland’s favourite book — The Scotsman (Lanark third)
- Alasdair Gray: making murals — Historic Environment Scotland
- Timeline — The Alasdair Gray Archive
- Lanark, 2015 — Edinburgh International Festival archive
- Alasdair Gray reads a happy bit from Lanark — A Gray Space (YouTube)
Bibliography, prizes and dates last checked 7 October 2026.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.”
— Alasdair Gray, Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)
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