How Late It Was, How Late

Summary

After a weekend bender and a beating from the Glasgow police, an unemployed former convict wakes up blind and must navigate the city's bureaucracies and his own circling thoughts. Kelman renders everything from inside Sammy's working class Scottish vernacular, a relentless interior voice that refuses the polite cadences of standard literary English. The novel is a fierce argument for the dignity and complexity of voices the mainstream novel has often kept off the page.