Scotland's books of the year revealed as author James Kelman gets lifetime achievement award

Award-winning writer had his first work published in 1973.

James Kelman, the controversial Glasgow-born Booker Prize winner who has struggled to find a publisher in recent years, has been honoured with a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to Scottish literature.

Author James Kelman. Picture: Greg MacveanAuthor James Kelman. Picture: Greg Macvean
Author James Kelman. Picture: Greg Macvean

Kelman was recognised at Scotland's flagship literary awards on Thursday night, more than half a century after his first work was published.

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He has been honoured by the Saltire Society, organisers of Scotland's National Book Awards since 1937 - 16 years after he won its Scottish Book of the Year title with his novel Kieron Smith, Boy.

Author Ajay Close.Author Ajay Close.
Author Ajay Close. | Supplied

Other winners at Scotland's National Book Awards, which are also known as The Saltires, included Ajay Close's novel What Doesn't Kill Us, which is partly inspired by the Yorkshire Ripper murders, which won the best fiction book prize.

Journalist and author Laura Cumming. Picture: Suki DhandaJournalist and author Laura Cumming. Picture: Suki Dhanda
Journalist and author Laura Cumming. Picture: Suki Dhanda | Suki Dhanda

Laura Cumming's Thunderclap, an exploration of the Golden Age of Dutch art, was named best non-fiction book and also won the overall Scottish Book of the Year award. The late poet John Burnside was recognised posthumously for his collection Ruin, Blossom, which was published in April, just weeks before he passed away.

Author Jen Stout.Author Jen Stout.
Author Jen Stout. | Andrew Cawley

Shetland writer Jen Stout won the best first book account for Night Train to Odesa, which recalls her experiences reporting on the war in Ukraine. Kelman is best known for his depiction of working-class life in Scotland and his use of the Glaswegian vernacular.

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However, most of his back catalogue of work is now out of print in the UK and he has suggested that London-based publishers are "elitist" and do not understand Scottish culture.

Greg Macvean Photography

Previous winners of the Saltire Society's lifetime achievement accolade, which it instigated in 2019, have included Liz Lochhead, Alexander McCall Smith, Douglas Dunn and the late Alasdair Gray.

Kelman, who did not attend the ceremony, said: “My work exists with or without any award, reward or prize. I regard the award as an acknowledgment of my work, a verification that it does after all exist.”

Born in Glasgow in 1946, Kelman left school at the age of 15, and went on to work in the printing industry and then as a bus driver.

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He started attending creative writing classes in Glasgow in 1971, meeting other writers like Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, and had his first short story collection, An Old Pub Near The Angel, published in 1973.

His first novel to be published was The Busconductor Hines, in 1984, while his 1987 short story collection Greyhouse Breakfast won the Cheltenham Prize for Literature.

His 1989 novel A Disaffection won the James Tait Black Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which he went on to win in 1994 for the novel How Late It Was, How Late, although Kelman's style of writing decision divided the judges and critics.

His most recent work includes the 2022 novel God's Teeth and Other Phenomena, and the short story collection Keep Moving and No Questions, which was published last year.

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Douglas Stuart, who became only the second Scottish writer to win the Booker Prize in 2020, has cited Kelman as a major influence on this work, saying that How Late It Was, How Late had changed his life when he read it.

Paying tribute to Kelman at the awards, Scott Hames, an expert on Scottish literature at Stirling University, said: “Kelman’s approach to Glasgow language and narrative style was so energising to the next generation of Scottish writers, it is difficult to imagine the work of Janice Galloway, Irvine Welsh, AL Kennedy or Alan Warner without it.

“That influence continues and is richly apparent in the work of novelists as different as Kirsty Gunn and Douglas Stuart.”

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