He was a Scottish writer and painter who wrote Lanark, one of the extraordinary works of fantasy literature. Gray's novel Poor Things, which earned Emma Stone the second Best Actress Oscar of her career, became the second film to receive the most Oscars at the 96th Academy Awards, where it was nominated in 11 categories.
He was born on 28 December 1934 in Riddrie, Glasgow. His family were evacuated during the war and moved to Yorkshire. He experienced his first asthma attack during this period and started writing. They returned to Glasgow in 1946 and Gray continued his education at Whitehill High School, where he won prizes in English and arts.
He studied drawing and painting at the Glasgow School of Art in 1952. In 1954, he realized the idea of writing a "huge and fantastic Glasgow story", which had first occurred to him in 1951, and began writing the novel Lanark.
Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.
After his graduation in 1957, he worked part-time as an art teacher, painted portraits and murals, and designed stage decorations. During this period, he also wrote various radio and television plays, some of which were staged.
In 1961, he met and married Inge Sorenson, a Danish nurse, and they had a son in 1963. In 1972 he joined the writing group run by academic and critic Philip Hobsbaum, where he met Tom Leonard and James Kelman. The following year Edwin Morgan helped him obtain a grant from the Arts Council to continue writing Lanark. By 1976 the book was more or less finished.
Gray's first novel, which received positive reviews from a wide range of people, was published in 1981. He won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Award with his novel The Poor People, published in 1992. Poor People was adapted into the cinema by Yorgos Lanthimos. The film, in which Emma Stone played the role of Bella, was among the Oscar nominees.
Blending fantasy and fabulation in his works to a humorous effect, Gray never loses his darker and more critical view of the effects of personal, cultural, and political alienation in the modern world. In his books, he makes liberal use of metafictional games, typographic effects, wry scientific insertions, and his own intricate illustrations.
The author never gave up his passion for painting. Some of his work is still on display in the Palace Rigg Park in Cumbernauld, Abbots House Local History Museum in Dunfermline, and the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant in Glasgow.
The author's other published works are as follows: Self Portrait, Old Negatives, McGrotty and Ludmilla and Something Leather, Poor Things, Ten Tales True and Tall (1993), Why Scots Should Rule Scotland, An Anthology of Prefaces (2000), A Short Survey of Classic Scottish Writing.
March 2024
Poor Things, which earned Emma Stone the second Best Actress Oscar of her career, became the second film to receive the most Oscars at the 96th Academy Awards, where it was nominated in 11 categories.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos is famous for his unique and unconventional storytelling style. He adapts the movie "Poor Things" from the feminist novel of Scottish author Alasdair Gray, who reinterprets the Frankenstein narrative in a satirical style. Shot in a retrofuturistic style and set in the Victorian era, the film is about the revival and evolution of a dying woman named Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) by the eccentric scientist Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe).