Author Biography

James Kelman was born in Glasgow in 1946. His early fiction includes the short-story collections An Old Pub Near the Angel (1973) and Not Not While the Giro (1983), and the novel The Busconductor Hines (1984). His novel A Disaffection (1989) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. How late it was, how late (1994) won the Booker Prize for Fiction. He is the author of a television screenplay, The Return (1991), and has written plays for radio and theatre. He has been nominated for the Man Booker International prize 2009. He is currently attached to Goldsmiths College, London, and the University of Glasgow. James Kelman lives in Glasgow

Synopsis

A raw, wry vision of human survival in a bureaucratic world, How Late It Was, How Late opens one Sunday morning in Glasgow, Scotland, as Sammy, an ex-convict with a penchant for shoplifting, awakens in a lane and tries to remember the two-day drinking binge that landed him there. Then, things only get worse. Sammy gets in a fight with some soldiers, lands in jail, and discovers that he is completely blind. His girlfriend disappears, the police probe him endlessly, and his stab at Disability Compensation embroils him in the Kafkaesque red tape of the welfare system