James Kelman
James Kelman (born 9 June 1946) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His novel '' A Disaffection'' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. Kelman won the 1994 Booker Prize with ''How Late It Was, How Late''. In 1998, Kelman was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards, Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award. His 2008 novel ''Kieron Smith, Boy'' won both of Scotland's principal literary awards: the Saltire Society Literary Awards, Saltire Society's Book of the Year and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards, Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year. Life and work Born in Glasgow, Kelman says: My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city. Four brothers, my mother a full time parent, my father in the picture framemaking and gilding t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 635,640. Straddling the border between historic Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, the city now forms the Glasgow City Council area, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and is governed by Glasgow City Council. It is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands. Glasgow has the largest economy in Scotland and the third-highest GDP per capita of any city in the UK. Glasgow's major cultural institutions – the Burrell Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Ballet and Scottish Opera – enjoy international reputations. The city was the European Capital of Culture in 1990 and is notable for its architecture, cult ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include '' The Stranger'', '' The Plague'', ''The Myth of Sisyphus'', '' The Fall'', and '' The Rebel''. Camus was born in French Algeria to '' Pieds Noirs'' parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at '' Combat'', an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union because of their totali ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Monologue
In theatre, a monologue (from el, μονόλογος, from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media (plays, films, etc.), as well as in non-dramatic media such as poetry. Monologues share much in common with several other literary devices including soliloquies, apostrophes, and asides. There are, however, distinctions between each of these devices. Similar literary devices Monologues are similar to poems, epiphanies, and others, in that, they involve one 'voice' speaking but there are differences between them. For example, a soliloquy involves a character relating their thoughts and feelings to themself and to the audience without addressing any of the other characters. A monologue is the thoughts of a person spoken out l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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First-person Narrative
A first-person narrative is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from their own point of view using the first person It may be narrated by a first-person protagonist (or other focal character), first-person re-teller, first-person witness, or first-person peripheral. A classic example of a first-person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's ''Jane Eyre'' (1847), in which the title character is also the narrator telling her own story, "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me". This device allows the audience to see the narrator's mind's eye view of the fictional universe, but it is limited to the narrator's experiences and awareness of the true state of affairs. In some stories, first-person narrators may relay dialogue with other characters or refer to information they heard from the other characters, in order to try to deliver a larger point of view. Other stories may switch the narrator to different cha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jeff Torrington
Jeff Torrington (31 December 1935 – 11 May 2008) was a novelist from Glasgow in Scotland. His novels draw on the changing face of modern Scotland. ''Swing Hammer Swing'' (1992) was set during the demolition of the old Gorbals. It took 30 years to write. ''The Devil's Carousel'' (1998) drew on the decline of a fictionalised version of the Rootes/Chrysler car plant at Linwood. Torrington worked there for eight years, as a telex sequencer, before the plant's closure. ''Swing Hammer Swing'' was Whitbread Book of the Year in 1992. Torrington's first published stories appeared in newspapers. He later attended a Paisley writers' group set up by James Kelman and a creative writing group in Glasgow associated with Philip Hobsbaum, which also included Kelman, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray and Aonghas MacNeacail Aonghas MacNeacail (born 7 June 1942), nickname ''Aonghas dubh'' or ''Black Angus'', is a contemporary writer in the Scottish Gaelic language. Early life MacNeac ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aonghas MacNeacail
Aonghas MacNeacail (born 7 June 1942), nickname ''Aonghas dubh'' or ''Black Angus'', is a contemporary writer in the Scottish Gaelic language. Early life MacNeacail was born in Uig on the Isle of Skye on 7 June 1942. He was raised in Idrigil, speaking Gaelic as a child. He was registered at birth as Angus Nicolson, but later changed his official name to "Aonghas MacNeacail," the Scottish Gaelic version of his name. He attended Uig Primary School and Portree High School, and from 1968 the University of Glasgow where he was one of a group of young writers who gathered around Philip Hobsbaum which also included James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead and Jeff Torrington. Career Besides drawing on Gaelic traditions, MacNeacail is influenced by the Black Mountain School of the US. He has held writing fellowships in Scotland, including residences at the Gaelic college of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Sabhal Mòr Ostaig () (Great Barn of Ostaig) is a public higher educati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Liz Lochhead
Liz Lochhead Hon FRSE (born 26 December 1947) is a Scottish poet, playwright, translator and broadcaster. Between 2011 and 2016 she was the Makar, or National Poet of Scotland, and served as Poet Laureate for Glasgow between 2005 and 2011. Early life Elizabeth Anne Lochhead was born in Craigneuk, a "little ex-mining village just outside Motherwell", Lanarkshire. Her mother and father had both served in the army during the Second World War, and later, her father was a local government clerk. In 1952, the family moved into a new council house in the mining village of Newarthill, where her sister was born in 1957. Though she was encouraged by her teachers to study English, Lochhead was determined to go to Glasgow School of Art where she studied between 1965 and 1970. After graduation Lochhead taught art at High Schools in Glasgow and Bristol, a career at which she says she was "terrible" Career Having written poetry as a child and whilst studying at Art School, Lochhead won a B ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alasdair Gray
Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, ''Lanark'' (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals, including one at the Òran Mór venue and one at Hillhead subway station. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before ''Lanark'', he had plays performed on radio and TV. His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tom Leonard (poet)
Tom Leonard (22 August 1944 – 21 December 2018) was a Scottish poet, writer and critic. He was best known for his poems written in Glaswegian dialect, particularly his ''Six Glasgow Poems'' and ''The Six O'Clock News''. His work frequently dealt with the relationship between language, class and culture. Biography Leonard was born in Glasgow in 1944. His father was a train-driver who had moved to Scotland from Dublin in 1916. His mother, also of Irish descent, came from Saltcoats and had previously worked at the Nobel dynamite factory in Ardeer. Tom was the youngest of four children - he had two brothers and one sister. He commenced study on a degree at the University of Glasgow in 1967, but left after two years. While there, he encountered poets including Tom McGrath, Alan Spence, Aonghas MacNeacail and Philip Hobsbaum, and also acted as editor of the university magazine. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philip Hobsbaum
Philip Dennis Hobsbaum (29 June 1932 – 28 June 2005) was a British teacher, poet and critic. Life Hobsbaum was born into a Polish Jewish family in London, and brought up in Bradford, Yorkshire, where he attended Belle Vue Boys' Grammar School. He read English at Downing College, Cambridge, where he was taught and heavily influenced by F. R. Leavis. At Cambridge he took over the editing of the magazine ''delta'' from Peter Redgrove. After Cambridge, he worked as a school teacher in London from 1955 to 1959, when he moved to Sheffield to study for a PhD under William Empson. In 1962 he took up an academic position at Queen's University, Belfast, and moved again in 1966, to take up a post in the University of Glasgow. He was awarded a personal chair in 1985, and retired from the University in 1997; he remained in Glasgow until his death in 2005. The Group(s) Hobsbaum's most direct impact on literature was as the animating force behind ''The Group'', a sequence of writing ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's ''Odyssey'' are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection ''Dubliners'' (1914), and the novels ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and ''Finnegans Wake'' (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism. Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. It became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English. During the Second World War, Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH (Réseau Gloria). Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |