by James Kelman

With his use of Scots vernacular and ample profanity, James Kelman has altered the landscape of the contemporary British literary scene. Kelman was born in 1946 near shipyards in the Glasgow neighborhood of Govan. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Drumchapel—an infamous housing estate on the edge of town, remote from shops and public transportation. The youngest of the five sons of struggling working-class parents, Kelman left school at age 15, dismissing its structure and lessons as irrelevant. For the next seven years, he read insatiably, educating himself while performing various menial jobs, from asbestos factory worker to bus driver before settling down to write. Convinced that workingclass characters seldom occupied any role other than servant, criminal, or comic relief, he set out to express the voices of the underprivileged, making the crucial decision early in his career to...