Alasdair Gray is the author of 1982, Janine; The Book of Prefaces; Old Men in Love; and Poor Things, for which he won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision", and as "a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today" and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian".
