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From Scenes Like These
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Brief Description
Shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize A masterpiece ... demands to be read - Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain An extraordinary novel - Michael Magee, author of Close to Home It's the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories...
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From Scenes Like These
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The rediscovered 20th-century Scottish classic shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize, with an introduction from James Robertson.
The lost 20th-century Scottish cult classic, shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize. Reissued with a new cover.
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Description
Shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize
A masterpiece ... demands to be read - Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
An extraordinary novel - Michael Magee, author of Close to Home
It's the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening.
But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men.
Irish Catholic Mary O'Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnantβno boyfriend in sight. But she's smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world.
As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud.
Now there's no going back, not for either of them.
With an introduction by James Robertson
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781035073566
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 29 May 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Picador
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 24.0mm
Width: 131.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 246g
Pages: 352
About the Author
Gordon M. Williams was born in Paisley in 1934. After he completed national service with the Royal Air Force in Germany, Willams began his career as a reporter for the Johnstone Advertiser, before moving to England and becoming an author in the mid-1960s. His novels include Walk Don't Walk, Big Morning Blues, The Camp, The Upper Pleasure Garden and From Scenes Like These, which was shortlisted for the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969. His novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm was adapted into the film Straw Dogs, directed by Sam Peckinpah. Working at the arts magazine Scene, Williams shared an office with the playwright Tom Stoppard. With Terry Venables, he wrote the beloved football novel They Used to Play on Grass, and later, while working as a commercial manager for Chelsea FC, the Hazell detective series, which was adapted for television in 1978. He died in 2017.
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