How Late it Was, How Late; SIGNED 1st/1st

Kelman, James

ISBN 10: 0436232928 / ISBN 13: 9780436232923

Published by Secker & Warburg, 1994

Signed by James Kelman to the title page. Winner of the Booker Prize. A very good+ copy of a first edition, first impression hardback in a fine, unclipped dustjacket which has been enclosed in a removable protective cover (foxing to top block) All books are swathed in biodegradable bubble wrap and posted in strong, custom made book boxes to ensure undamaged delivery. Seller Inventory # 014183

Synopsis:

This is the tale of a man whose life is in a mess. While drunk, he has a row with his girlfriend, is involved in a fracas with the police, and appears to go blind. But this is just the start. The novel won the 1994 Booker Prize.

Review: "Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye; these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it, why can ye no do it; the words filling yer head: then the other words; there's something wrong; there's something far far wrong; ye're no a good man, ye're just no a good man." From the moment Sammy wakes slumped in a park corner, stiff and sore after a two-day drinking binge and wearing another man's shoes, James Kelman's Booker Prize-winning novel How Late it Was, How Late loosens a torrent of furious stream-of-consciousness prose that never lets up. Beaten savagely by Glasgow police, the shoplifting ex-con Sammy is hauled off to jail, where he wakes to a world gone black. For the rest of the novel he stumbles around the rainy streets of Glasgow, brandishing a sawed-off mop handle and trying in vain to make sense of the nightmare his life has become. Sammy's girlfriend disappears; the police question him for a crime they won't name; the doctor refuses to admit that he's blind; and his attempts to get disability compensation founder in Kafkaesque red tape. Gritty, profane, darkly comic and steeped in both American country music and working-class Scottish vernacular, Sammy's is a voice the reader won't soon forget. --Mary Park

Bibliographic Details

Title: How Late it Was, How Late; SIGNED 1st/1st
Publisher: Secker & Warburg
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition