How Late It Was, How Late (Direct)

James Kelman

Book cover for How Late It Was, How Late (Direct)
Image for variant 9780393327991
Book cover for How Late It Was, How Late (Direct)
Image for variant 9780393327991

How Late It Was, How Late (Direct)

How Late It Was, How Late (Direct)

James Kelman

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Description

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.

Critical Reviews

"Witty, irreverent and thoroughly engrossing.... Kelman is a major talent, and this is a bold, highly accomplished novel."

Publishing Information

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pub date: 2005-10-01
Length: 388 pages

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