Dirt Road

(Paperback, Main)

Publishing Details

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Description

Shortlisted for Saltire Fiction Book of the Year'

A celebration of what it is to be human' Spectator

Murdo, a teenager obsessed with music, dreams of a life beyond home. His recently widowed dad, Tom, stumbles towards the future, terrified of losing what remains of his family. Both are in search of something as they set out from rural Scotland on a journey to the American South.

Reviews

Dirt Road is brilliant . . . a deeply moving and exciting novel -- RODDY DOYLE
A brilliantly understated tale about coming of age, grief and the folk music of the American deep south . . . poignant and beautiful ***** * * Daily Telegraph * *
A delight . . . The best thing [Kelman] has written -- ALLAN MASSIE * * Scotsman * *
In Dirt Road James Kelman brings alive a human consciousness like no other writer can -- ALAN WARNER
Another masterpiece from one of our best writers -- KIRSTY GUNN * * Guardian * *
Kelman in the American South, with a zydeco lilt, proves irresistible - a thrilling return from one of our most essential novelists -- KEVIN BARRY
Strange and beautiful . . . Kelman gives us visceral vernacular, Joycean stream of consciousness, wry humor, old resentments and painful memories, all in counterpoint to the music on and off stage . . . A celebration of what it is to be human * * Spectator * *
Beautiful. Dirt Road is about coming of age, grief and the folk music of the American deep south * * Daily Telegraph * *
Draws you like a magnet * * Herald Scotland * *
In writing as pure as this, language becomes the very bones and meat of the characters. I am not transported by these sentences into Murdo's world; I am Murdo -- ROSS RAISIN

Author Bio

James Kelman was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989 with A Disaffection, which also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. He went on to win the Booker Prize five years later with How Late it Was, How Late, before being shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and 2011.