Kelman, James

Average customer rating:

What a wonderful drunken, beautiful mess.
Poor effort from Big Jim
A gripping, personal exploration of anguish
It's not too late to read a great book
Excellent

How Late It Was, How Late: A Novel
James Kelman
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 039332799X

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"Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye; these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it, why can ye no do it; the words filling yer head: then the other words; there's something wrong; there's something far far wrong; ye're no a good man, ye're just no a good man." From the moment Sammy wakes slumped in a park corner, stiff and sore after a two-day drunk and wearing another man's shoes, James Kelman's Booker Prize-winning novel How Late it Was, How Late loosens a torrent of furious stream-of-consciousness prose that never lets up. Beaten savagely by Glasgow police, the shoplifting ex-con Sammy is hauled off to jail, where he wakes to a world gone black. For the rest of the novel he stumbles around the rainy streets of Glasgow, brandishing a sawed-off mop handle and trying in vain to make sense of the nightmare his life has become. Sammy's girlfriend disappears; the police question him for a crime they won't name; the doctor refuses to admit that he's blind; and his attempts to get disability compensation tangle in Kafkaesque red tape. Gritty, profane, darkly comic, and steeped in both American country music and working class Scottish vernacular, Sammy's is a voice the reader won't soon forget. --Mary Park

Book Description

<B>Winner of the Booker Prize. "A work of marvelous vibrance and richness of character."—New York Times Book Review</B><BR><BR>One Sunday morning in Glasgow, shoplifting ex-con Sammy awakens in an alley, wearing another man's shoes and trying to remember his two-day drinking binge. He gets in a scrap with some soldiers and revives in a jail cell, badly beaten and, he slowly discovers, completely blind. And things get worse: his girlfriend disappears, the police question him for a crime they won't name, and his stab at disability compensation embroils him in the Kafkaesque red tape of the welfare bureaucracy. Told in the utterly uncensored language of the Scottish working class, this is a dark and subtly political parable of struggle and survival, rich with irony and black humor.

Customer Reviews:

What a wonderful drunken, beautiful mess........2005-08-22

This is one of my favorite books of all time but let me warn you it is a mess to read and if you are easily offended this is not the book for you. Full of swear words and written in dialect (which makes it very hard to read) this one is an acquired taste. If you have just finished reading Trainspotting (the only good book by Irvine Welsh & not the greatest movie) which has a glossary of terms it is a little easier. Winner of the Booker Prize because it is pure genus and a one-of-a-kind read. Completely original, written well before Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and much, much better.

Poor effort from Big Jim.......2005-08-08

The style of this book apparently is know in the trade as "stream of consciousness", but anyone who has ever set foot in Glasgow can see it's just standard weegie punter pub patter spun out into book length and format.

I had high expectations coming to this book, having won the Booker prize and generally acclaimed by the critics. But as story lines go, it's average. As a piece of English literature, it's not even on the radar screens. As a piece of Scots literature, it's been heavily watered down (sorry to disappoint the other reviewers who thought the 'dialect' - in actual fact banter - was quite strong). If you're after a solid piece of contemporary Scots stuff in the same vein, Irvine Welsh (Edinburgh) is far better, you'll get a proper story line, some bare minimum of character development, more energy all round and better language. If you're wanting really classic stuff, then maybe Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Aberdonian).

But to give the book credit where due, there are some strong points. If you have never been to Glasgow or Scotland (or if you have and are nostalgic - it does happen so I am told...), this book is full of those 'only-in-Glasgow' gems; but to repeat you don't have to be a great author to put them down on paper. If you've never been to Scotland you can have a taster of how depressing life really is there.

There's bound to be literary critics out there who can dig out profound observations on human nature and modern society in this. But then again this sort of folk can see meaning in an old bag of chips or a soggy newspaper. And is hard to see whether Kelman actually intended anything with this book other than to make a few coins.

Other good points. It's a pretty light read, you can steam through it in no time, and it's ideal for reading on the beach (if you have the luck), on the bus, waiting in a queue etc.

If you can avoid spending the money, try borrowing from a friend or from the library. It's not one of those classic tomes you will be wanting to grace your own collection in years to come.

If you're seriously wanting to find out more about Scotland and the way of life/language, the only real way to do it is through the cinema. Similar sort of approach to Kelman is taken by Ken Loach ('My name is Joe', 'Sweet Sixteen').

A gripping, personal exploration of anguish.......2003-04-24

It's a shame no one seemed to notice this book in America despite its Booker Prize. Kelman's low-to-the-ground style really conveys the despair of the main character, Sammy. This book has a haunting quality about it that's reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger, yet it is a much more confused, frenzied, quickening spiral toward oblivion.

It's not too late to read a great book.......2001-03-03

"No frigate like a book to take us lands away," said Emily Dickinson. Oh my, she's right. There are other worlds out there, lots of them. Kelman's book takes us to one, a unique one, right in the middle of Glasgow, in fact in the outer limits of consciousness somewhere - in the mind of a low-life petty thief named Sammy who stupidly assaulted two policemen and got beaten so badly by them that he is blinded. After that, everything in this book is generated, more or less, in Sammy's head as interior monologue (not stream of consciousness as others say) or by the speech of the characters Sammy deals with. Those characters do plenty of talking with an extremely limited vocabulary that nevertheless has an amazing expressive range proving, again, that Scotland is a nation of talkers, great talkers. It is also a welfare state with lots of red tape and institutionalized dullness. So much so that Sammy's difficulties with the DSS Central Medical board and with the DSS in general call into question the Scottish I.Q. and raise the query that they might have there some institutional madness as serious as that discussed in Bleak House. Some advice: Donay be turned off by ye Scottish dialect. Read the first three pages aloud. Aw fine. Aye, they make sense. Ah stories, man, stories, life's full of stories, there to help ye out. Aye right pal okay.

Excellent.......2000-12-08

One of the most interesting novels I've read in quite a while, How Late it Was, How Late is an introspective journey through the struggles of a newly blind ex-con. James Kelman's pseudo- stream of consciousness narrative presents the thoughts and emotions of the protagonist with unrivalled clarity. His unique approach to writing from the perspective of a sightless narrator has never been utilized in such an innovative and accessible (not to mention believable) way. The reader suffers alongside Sammy and is comforted in turn by his defiant philosophy. The book is truly an emotional masterpiece. The action is non-stop and liberally scattered with the ramblings of a compelling, defiant philosophy. How Late it Was, How Late, though unfit for children, must not be condemned for its language but rather appreciated for its natural, honest portrayal of the author's culture.

Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political

Average customer rating:

an excellent book discussing British left-wing politics

Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political
James Kelman
Manufacturer: AK Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1873176805

Customer Reviews:

an excellent book discussing British left-wing politics.......1997-12-08

Little is known about Mr. Kelman, which is a shame, considering that he won the Booker Prize in 1994. So, it is with much enthusiam that I recommend this book. Here, one can get the inside scoop of his political thinking. If you have read his books, it should be no surprise to you that he is a man of the left. Now, will someone write a biography about this man?

Average customer rating:

Ach. I didni like it, no.
Better than How Late it Was, How Late?
Reads like you're living in somebody's head

A Disaffection
James Kelman
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free

ASIN: 0374140243

Customer Reviews:

Ach. I didni like it, no........2005-08-02

I began 'A Disaffection' enthusiastically. Aside from the brilliant Glaswegian vernacular and some tasty morsels of cynicism, however, the book felt long, slowly paced, and overdrawn. Doyle's character and predicament -- his disillusionment, like of drink, near-obsession with co-worker Alison, and fascination with cardboard pipes, of all things -- are largely described and summed up within the first two pages. Literally. After these, everything is redundant. Doyle is dissatisfied, and true to the title, disaffected; you'll likely feel the same after reading this novel.

Better than How Late it Was, How Late?.......2004-06-06

If there's one thing to be said about Kelman's A Disaffection, besides the fact that one wonders whether or not its detractors have actually read it, is that it is, in fact, superior to How Late It Was, How Late. Unlike that novel, it manages to be both a novel of an interior journey and to-the-point, much in the way of James Joyce or John McGahern succeed. It's unfair that there's so much mental red tape surrounding James Kelman's work. See how many otherwise intelligent newspaper reviewers rush to cite Irvine Welsh's influence upon anything realistic and featuring vernacular scots, a tradition dating centuries, (and also present in the work of Kelman's equally remakable contemporaries Janice Galloway, Agnes Owens, Alasdair Gray and Jeff Torrington). Such goons in the reviewing world mistake the Regent for the Monarch. The same could be said no less of other writers who have reaped more exposure - and more money - from Kelman's example. Roddy Doyle, for instance, or Niall Griffiths. Through Patrick Doyle's mind we witness the working-class scot/holy fool letting fly at a petty, judgemental world with everything he has, beginning his rebellion against the world. Though it was written in (and by) the 1980's, the time of greed, vastly widening inequality (Doyle works in a comprehensive, and the scenes here are absolutely true to life) and tabloid-backed Thatcherism, there are no references that date the novel. The difference between Kelman and his friend and contemporary Alasdair Gray is that the endless dialogue of self and society is not conducted through opposing characters but in the mind of one narrator. This world of interior defiant richness and oddness against the real world makes the novel not only raid but consolidate territory only Kafka and Hamsun have previously held. As a result, by the end of the novel we feel we've sat through something as purgatively exhausting as a greek tragedy. The fact that there is a rich seam of humour in Kelman's novel - like in all his work - should not be overlooked, either. It was the natural winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1989, and held a well-deserved place on the booker list of that year. Buy - and point out to your friends and co-readers the debt owed to Kelman by Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh.

Reads like you're living in somebody's head.......2001-07-19

I guess there's no easy way into a James Kelman novel. He is not the most accessible of writers to non-native readers because he uses the language of the vernacular to capture the essence of daily thought and speech patterns of the Scottish working class. Authentic it may well be, this style of writing is nevertheless limiting in its readership appeal. Thus, it was with some reservation that I began on "A Disaffection", my first Kelman novel. After stumbling around a bit with familiar looking words spelled funny and expletives that scream at you from nearly every line, I got into a rhythmn and found myself on the way to a strange journey that's not without its appeal. Kelman's stream of consciousness style means that we stay very much within the confines of our hero Patrick Doyle's mind. Nothing much happens but that's the point. Pat is a university graduate from a working class background, who hates and despises his job as a teacher, believes he is polluting the minds of the children he teaches with useless capitalist thoughts, secretly falls for Alison, a fellow teacher who's married, but is too scared to declare his intentions, and ends up being transferred to another school but cannot remember having asked for the transfer. It's bad enough that he's paralysed by inaction, his elder brother, Gavin, an unemployed builder, harbours a secret resentment against Pat for being the educated one in the family, not realising his lonely plight. The novel begins with two sets of pipes that Pat finds at the back of the Arts Club, intending to use as musical instruments. He never gets round to it. That's the story of his life. The pipes are a symbol of his private ambitions. They are painted and shiny but he never gets round to playing them at the nightclub after work. "A Disaffection" is remorseless in its pessimism and criticism of the state of Scottish society but it's also infused with so much good humour and honesty you leave the embattled scene not necessarily unscarred but alive. My first taste of Kelman may have been fraught with some initial difficulties but you get the hang of it and the final verdict is a thumbs up.

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The quiet voice of a master

7 Stories (AK Press Audio)
James Kelman
Manufacturer: AK Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 1873176341

Customer Reviews:

The quiet voice of a master.......2000-07-13

I was first introduced to Kelman by an English teacher in secondary school. He exposed my class to modern Scottish writing, ALasdair Gray, Tom Leonard, and James Kelman. Indeed, Kelman was invited to my school to give a reading (unusual given the language in his fiction).

I did not read Kelman for a time afterwards, but came to him again through Alasdair Gray's Lanark. Here, in the epilogue (Four chapters before the end) there are a number of footnotes, one of which was the text of Acid, a short story featured on this collection. It is very short (just longer than Richard Brautigan's The Scarlatti Tilt) but remains one of the most powerful things I have read, exploring the nature of work, love, and a parent child relationship in under fifty words.

I then started devouring Kelman, the novels and the short stories. Although, I love Kelman's novels (especially A Chancer and A Disaffection) it is to the short stories I keep returning. His collections from Three Glasgow Writers, through An Old Pub near the angel, Not not while the giro, Greyhound for Breakfast, The Burn and The Good Times, are essential reading. They reveal so much about the human condition - and, in his later work, the nature of maleness (without any Robert Bly nonsense).

Kelman writes in dialect, and is very funny (although this is lost in much controversy about his use of swearie words).

This collection of 7 stories (8 on the audio cassette) is excellent. You hear the voice of a master, a quiet determined voice, that - with no hystrionics - allows the work to shine. The collection showcases some of the best of Kelman, although, for reasons of length, his impressive longer short stories (e.g. A situation from The Burn) are not present. However, the Cd is worth it for two of the stories alone. Acid, and Roofsliding. Acid is described above. Rooofsliding is Kelman at his funniest. An academic analysis of strange behaviour in the tenements of Glasgow. It is dry, it is witty, and the easy style with which Kelman reads accentuates the humour.

You should read Kelman, and you should listen to him. Because when you hear him, his voice will permeate your readings of his fiction. You will feel the tone, will note the nuances.

This is a collection to love and play again and again, and we must be grateful to the companies are taking the effort to commit our great writers to audio collections.

Book Description

Living in a no-bedroomed tenement flat, coping with the cold and boredom of busconducting and the bloody-mindedness of Head Office, knowing that emigrating to Australia is only an impossible dream, Robert Hines finds life to be `a very perplexing kettle of coconuts'. The compensations are a wife and child, and a gloriously anarchic imagination.

The Busconductor Hines is a brilliantly executed, uncompromising slice of the Glasgow scene, a portrait of working-class life which is unheroic but humane.

Customer Reviews:

gritty Rob Hines.......2001-09-23

Hines lives in a crappy flat with no bathrub. He conducts a city bus (he's not passed the driving test, indeed he doesn't even have a driver's license). His job is mind-numbingly boring, his supervisors are daft, and his life is just one lousy day after another.

The weather is horrid. His companions tell the stupidest and worst jokes and tales.

R. Hines regularly shows up late for work, or forgets his hat, and is always in trouble with his supervisors. He's regularly skipping work for one reason or another. Always on the brink of being canned.

Still, he has a lovely wife (who is understandably upset with his work performance), and a charming little toddler boy. They're not going anywhere fast. Hines wants a better life for his family, but they're not going to get it.

Your man Hines, though, he's got a brain, and a biting sense of humor. This, along with a bit of drink, gets him through each day.

Some have written that Irvine Welsh (_Trainspotting_) read _The Busconductor Hines_, which demonstrated to him the possibility of writing in his own Scottish voice, about the real people of Scotland. I can believe that.

James Kelman has created one of the greatest characters you'll ever read-- Rabbie Hines.

ken32

Born Up a Close
Average customer rating:
Born Up a Close
Hugh Savage , and James Kelman
Manufacturer: Argyll Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1902831977

You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free
Average customer rating:

Garbage - Kelman has written )better

a dark view of contemporary america

"Everybody vanishes, that is what life is, unresolved."

You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free
James Kelman
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

In the superbly crafted and critically acclaimed You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free, James Kelman has created an unforgettable character and a darkly comic portrait of a post-9/11 America.

Jeremiah Brown, a Scottish immigrant in his early thirties, has lived in the United States for twelve years. He has moved as many times, from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again, all in the hope his luck would change. To add to his restlessness and indecision, he now has a nonrefundable ticket to Glasgow--by way of Seattle, Canada, Iceland, and England--to visit his mother. On his last night in the States, Jeremiah finds himself in a town south of Rapid City, moving from bar to bar, attracting and repelling strangers, losing count of the beers he has drunk. All the while he is haunted by memories and by an acute sense of foreboding.

Customer Reviews:

Garbage - Kelman has written )better.......2006-02-11

Poor James Kelman - seems the Booker Prize has finally gone to his head. He's actually starting to think that what he does is important. After writing some excellent novels live How Late It Was, How Late and Translated Accounts he spits out this garbage. Good for nothing, alcoholic, paranoid, Scottish loser comes to America looking for opportunity - when it is not handed to him on a silver platter he decideds its due to American racism (and George Bush). Of course we all remember those sad post-911 days when Scottish immigrants were the target of so much American hatred. And who can forget the terrible invasion of Scotland (that damn war for oil!). Kelman has totally lost his mind if he thinks the reader will be able to feel for poor Jeremiah Brown. Brown sits in a bar drinking his face off, complaining about American immigration policies (ever consider putting some of that energy into cleaning yourself up and looking for a job?).

The use of Scottish phoentic writing in How Late was an interesting idea and Kelman can be forgiven for trying this gimmick in one or two more novels, but I think its time he gave it up for good and tried something different (Translated Accounts was a good first step).

a dark view of contemporary america.......2005-09-22

A brilliant extended piece of stream of consciousness writing and a scathing indictment of GWB's Hobbesian american dystopia. Unlike Kelman's earlier works this novel is not set in Glasgow, but is instead set inside the head of a working class Scottish immigrant who becomes stranded in the snowy wasteland of Dakota while trying to work his way home to Glasgow. As do all of Kelman's novels, this one operates on numerous levels, being both a celebration of the rich working class dialect of his native city as well as a commentary on the inadequacies of human communication. Like a more sympathetic (and more hopeful) S. Beckett, Kelman notes our miserable failure as a species to live up to our potential, yet holds out hope that one day we might do better in communicating/loving/caring for one another. Kelman's work falls in the great Marxist/Existentialist tradition of those writers who believe that we may indeed be all alone, but that that aloneness is a shared condition which allows for the possibility of us mitigating our suffering (and in turn creating meaning) by caring for one another.

"Everybody vanishes, that is what life is, unresolved.".......2004-07-05

Jeremiah Brown, another of Booker Prize-winner James Kelman's down-and-out protagonists, thinks of himself as a writer and keeps a notebook into which he jots down his observations about his life, recording them in the vernacular--phonetic spellings ("Skallin" for Scotland, "Uhmerkin" for American, for example); pervasive profanity; and run-on sentences and paragraphs. No chapters interrupt or divide the stream-of-consciousness narrative, told by Jeremiah, as he drinks his way through a series of bars in Rapid City, South Dakota, the night before he is supposed to begin his roundabout trip home to Glasgow, by way of Seattle, Montreal, Newfoundland, Iceland, Amsterdam, and Edinburgh.

As he reminisces about his life, especially his life with his "ex-wife" Yasmin, whom he never married, and their daughter, now four years old, he shows himself to be aimless, "a non-assimilatit alien...Aryan Caucasian atheist, born loser...big debts, nay brains." A compulsive gambler, pool player, and heavy drinker, Jerry has held a series of dead end jobs, the only kinds of jobs, he tells us, that are open to immigrants with Class III Red Cards--primarily bar-tending and nighttime airport security work.

The novel follows no logical time frame, spooling out from Jerry's memories in more or less random fashion. We observe his relationship with Yasmin, his "ex-wife," and meet his acquaintances, including Suzanne and Miss Perpetua, two other security guards from the Alien and Alien Extraction Section who also patrol the periphery of the airport car park where he works; two down-and-out war vets, Homer and Jethro, who sleep wherever they can find warmth and space; and "the being," a grocery cart pusher who frequently disappears into thin air and about whose gender bets have been made.

Obviously, plot is not the focus here. In choosing to recreate Jerry's aimless inner life in such a realistic way, however, the author has created a character who does not change or gain the self-awareness that makes his life relevant to most readers. As a character, Jerry does not really engage the reader, and that seems to be part of the author's point: Jerry is and always will be an outsider. Humor, most of it dark, permeates the novel, and an episode with "the being" in the airport VIP lounge is hilarious, but the ending is startling in its abruptness and may surprise readers. Kelman the iconoclast has, once again, produced an unusual and iconoclastic novel in which he experiments with form and structure, bringing to life a character who remains forever on the periphery, even for the reader. Mary Whipple

Translated Accounts : A Novel
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4 stars

4 stars

Virtually unreadable

Not Since Beckett Has There Been Such A Book

Translated Accounts : A Novel
JAMES KELMAN
Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
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Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

In Translated Accounts, the Booker Prize-winning author of How late it was, how late, offers us a harrowing glimpse into a realm where power is unchecked and liberties are few or nonexistent. Taking us into an unnamed territory that appears to be under military rule, Kelman creates a world that many know or have known, a world that may one day be thrust upon us, conjuring a grim awareness of the instability that lurks behind the veneer of order in any country. Filtering the dark visions of Franz Kafka through the verbal brilliance of Samuel Beckett, Kelman has written a novel that is often shocking, yet surprisingly poignant, and totally unforgettable.

Customer Reviews:

4 stars.......2003-01-26

James Kelman won the Booker Prize for his novel "How Late It Was, How Late" a good few years ago now, but in the time since then he has produced superior work such as "The Good Times" and "Translated Accounts".
This book is a series of narratives written/spoken/emailed by people (of uncertain geographical location) whose right to free speech has been denied to the extent that sometimes it is only by attempting a decoding of the censor's voice that anything can be understood.
The narratives are sometimes romantic, sometimes banal, and occasionally horrific. But because the language is garbled by translation or censorship, the images thrown up are general rather than specific. There is no doubt that the author knows a lot about the former Yugoslavia, but such reference points aren't really useful since the book is more concerned with this kaleidoscope of individual experiences, rather than shaking a leftist fist at governments.
In ways this book is a first. It's not the everything's-under-the-surface dream world of Joyce's "Finnegans Wake". It's not the inner-city Glasgow of "How Late". Neither poetry nor prose. What it is is the glacial hardness of the human spirit under a strain so great that sense itself is broken.

4 stars.......2003-01-26

Virtually unreadable.......2002-07-01

I thought How Late it Was, How Late was excellent and one of the best books I have read in the past couple of years. So, I had high expectations after hearing about Translated Accounts. The premise of the book is intriguing but the language and repetitiveness of the book made a worthwhile story unbearable.

Not Since Beckett Has There Been Such A Book.......2001-10-22

There's so many books out there, and so many good ones (thankfully), so it's hard to explain exactly why, after reading this one, I felt I'd read something truly important.
Language forms the deep centre of this novel, the story of an un-named country under what seems to be a kind of stark martial law.
The whole book is written in a kind of elegantly broken English. These are the stories of a non-English country forced into English with little regard for the identities of the people or the importance of either language. You see how hard it is to explain?

After all that has happened recently, the fibre of this story feels desperately necessary. The human stuff that is so difficult to parse within this novel (due to the faulty translations--the really incredible style developed by Kelman, it's just amazing, really), is the struggle we're now all facing to find the right language to describe our horrors.

This book will immediately remind you of certain books by Nobel prize winning guy Samuel Beckett. It's not as heavy a read as say, The Unnamable, which is good. It's sort of like Beckett's later fictions, but instead of completely vanishing down the endless hole of despair and (let's face it) nonsense, Kelman is telling a fascinating story.

Customer Reviews:

Great critical overviews.......2001-05-17

Each writer is covered by a long critical article which gives an overview of all of their major works and provides insight into the themes and concerns of each writer. It is definitely a great place to go for background on the writers and help with interpreting their works.

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Translated Accounts
Kelman. James
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NUONCS

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