McGrotty and Ludmilla - Alasdair Gray

Mungo McGrotty's career in Whitehall is going nowhere. But when he finds the mysterious (and deadly) Harbinger Report, he realises he can blackmail his way to the very top.

This twisted Grayian retelling of the Aladdin story under the Thatcher regime sees our hero rise from pawn to power. But at what cost?

Born in 1934, Alasdair Gray graduated in design and mural painting from the Glasgow School of Art. Since 1981, when Lanark was published by Canongate, he authored, designed and illustrated seven novels, several books of short stories, a collection of his stage, radio and TV plays and a book of his visual art, A Life in Pictures. In November 2019, he received a Lifetime Achievement award by the Saltire Society. He died in December 2019, aged eighty-five.

A necessary genius
ALI SMITH

One of the brightest intellectual and creative
lights Scotland has known in modern times
NICOLA STURGEON

Gray is a true original, a twentieth century
William Blake
Observer

The best Scottish novelist since Sir Walter
Scott
ANTHONY BURGESS

One of the most gifted writers to have put pen to
paper in the English language
IRVINE WELSH

Gray transformed our expectations of what
Scottish literature could be
VAL McDERMID