Glasgow speech, bureaucracy and small acts of resistance are central to James Kelman’s Scottish fiction. How Late It Was, How Late follows Sammy, a Glaswegian ex-convict who wakes after a drinking binge, is beaten by police and discovers he cannot see, forcing him into a bureaucratic struggle over benefits and basic recognition. A Disaffection centres on a schoolteacher increasingly alienated from work and social expectation, while short-story collections use similarly close attention to thought, conversation and small acts of resistance. Kelman’s prose often follows Scots-inflected inner speech and avoids an explanatory narrator standing above the characters. The clearest marketplace links are Scottish literature, working-class fiction, experimental realism and urban social writing alongside Irvine Welsh and Agnes Owens. Read more Less
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