Surviving the Shipwreck

by William McIlvanney

This is a collection of the author's thoughts on a wide range of subjects from poverty and unemployment to disco dancing and dog racing, from Norman Mailer and Alan Whicker to T.S. Eliot and J.R. Ewing.

Genres: Scotland

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 1991

About the author

William McIlvanney was a Scottish writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. He was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s. He is regarded as "the father of 'Tartan Noir’" and has been described as "Scotland's Camus".

His first book, Remedy is None, was published in 1966 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1967. Docherty (1975), a moving portrait of a miner whose courage and endurance is tested during the depression, won the Whitbread Novel Award.

Laidlaw (1977), The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983) and Strange Loyalties (1991) are crime novels featuring Inspector Jack Laidlaw. Laidlaw is considered to be the first book of Tartan Noir.

William McIlvanney was also an acclaimed poet, the author of The Longships in Harbour: Poems (1970) and Surviving the Shipwreck (1991), which also contains pieces of journalism, including an essay about T. S. Eliot. McIlvanney wrote a screenplay based on his short story Dreaming (published in Walking Wounded in 1989) which was filmed by BBC Scotland in 1990 and won a BAFTA.

Since April 2013, McIlvanney's own website has featured personal, reflective and topical writing, as well as examples of his journalism.

Adapted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...