Old Men in Love is mostly the posthumous papers of a recondite - yet venal - retired Glaswegian schoolmaster, John Tunnock (as in the celebrated tea cake), that have, seemingly, been edited and collated by Gray himself. Tunnock is a beguiling figure, at once feisty and fusty. His historical fictions chivvy us into Periclean Athens, Renaissance Italy and then bury our noses in the ordure of sanctity given off by charismatic Victorian religious sectaries. Excursions into geological time are placed in counterpoint to diaristic jottings describing Tunnock's own erotic misadventures and the millennial trivia of the Anthony Linton Blair Government's final five years.
'Bloomsbury has done this handsomely, making of Tunnock's tales a gorgeous object in eye-bending blue and silver... Gray's startling imagination fizzes throughout... beautiful, inventive, ambitious and nuts.' Sunday Times
'Alasdair Gray, it seems, is unwilling to muck about with a good formula... A work of some genius... If you like Alasdair Gray, this has it all.' Independent on Sunday
Born in Riddrie, Glasgow, in 1934, Alasdair Gray trained as a painter at Glasgow School of Art and describes himself as a "verbal and pictorial artist", who often combines his artistic and writing talents, for example, by illustrating his own books. He has written for stage, radio and television as well as fiction and short stories.
His 1981 debut novel, Lanark, is widely regarded as one of the greatest of Scottish novels, and won both the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year and Scottish Arts Council Book awards.
Poor Things in 1992 won both Guardian Fiction and Whitbread Novel awards.
Old Men in Love is published by Bloomsbury.
www.alasdairgray.co.uk