Dirt Road
James Kelman
“The truth is he didn't care how long he was going away. Forever would have suited him. It didn't matter it was America. America was good but wherever. Things closed in. It was not Dad’s fault, just life”
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From the Booker Prize-winning James Kelman, ‘Dirt Road is about coming of age, grief and the folk music of the American deep south’ Daily Telegraph
Shortlisted for Saltire Fiction Book of the Year 2016
‘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.
“Dirt Road is brilliant … a deeply moving and exciting novel”
Roddy Doyle
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“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
James Kelman
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 then went on to win the Booker Prize five years later with How Late It Was, How Late, before being shortlisted twice for the Man Booker International Prize, in 2009 and 2011. Dirt Road was shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year in 2016. His most recent book of stories, That Was a Shiver, is published by Canongate in 2017.
“In Dirt Road we see [Kelman] continuing to show how human experience can be energised and renewed by its modest scale, not flattened by it into a stereotype. It is another masterpiece from one of our best writers.”
Kirsty Gunn
Guardian
