Old Men in Love

Gavin read Gray's magnum opus Lanark years ago (after being given it by his mother!) and went on to read everything of Gray's he could get his hands on. A couple of years ago he and Kelly had tea with Gray in his Glasgow flat and persuaded him that Small Beer Press was the place to be. Gavin is ecstatic to at last (offers were made on the last few books) get to publish one of Scotland's most individual and fascinating authors and everyone at Small Beer intends to make sure the word gets out that Gray's unique melding of humor and metafiction is not like anything else in literature: this is smart, down to earth, funny, bawdy, politically-inspired, dark, multi-layered stuff. We want to get this book out to Gray's previous readership and to new readers who enjoy the kind of intertextual play Gray delights in. Gray's previous novels have been reviewed in the New York Times, LA Times, Entertainment Weekly, PW, Kirkus, etc., so we expect to receive a solid amount of national review attention. Advance Access galley mailing. Galleys at NEIBA Trade Show. Publishers Weekly and Library Journal Spring Announcement ads. Online and print advertising. Author's website: http://www.alasdairgray.co.uk Small Beer Press newsletter, Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, etc. publicity featuring an interview with the author. "The greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott." --Anthony Burgess

A fantastic layered novel of stories within stories set in Athens, Florence, Somerset, and Glasgow."Beautiful, inventive, ambitious and nuts."-The Times (London) "Our nearest contemporary equivalent to Blake, our sweetest-natured screwed-up visionary."-London Evening Standard Alasdair Gray's unique melding of humor and metafiction at once hearken back to Laurence Sterne and sit beside today's literary mash-ups with equal comfort. Old Men in Love is smart, down-to-earth, funny, bawdy, politically inspired, dark, multi-layered, and filled with the kind of intertextual play that Gray delights in. As with Gray's previous novel Poor Things, several partial narratives are presented together. Here the conceit is that they were all discovered in the papers of the late John Tunnock, a retired Glasgow teacher who started a number of novels in settings as varied as Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Victorian Somerset, and Britain under New Labour. This is the first US edition (updated with the author's corrections from the UK edition) of a novel that British critics lauded as one of the best of Gray's long career. Beautifully printed in two colors throughout and featuring Gray's trademark strong design, Old Men in Love will stand out from everything else on the shelf. Fifty percent is fact and the rest is possible, but it must be read to be believed. Alasdair Gray is one of Scotland's most well-known and acclaimed artists. He is the author of nine novels, including Lanark, 1982 Janine, and the Whitbread and Guardian Prize-winning Poor Things, as well as four collections of stories, two collections of poetry, and three books of nonfiction, including The Book of Prefaces. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.