In a statement, Gray’s family thanked his friends and hospital staff, calling him “an extraordinary person; very talented and, even more importantly, very humane”.Among those to pay tribute were author Val McDermid, who credited Gray for having “transformed our expectations of what Scottish literature could be”, and Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who called him “one of Scotland’s literary giants, and a decent, principled human being.” “He’ll be remembered best for the masterpiece that is Lanark, but everything he wrote reflected his brilliance,” Gray came to fiction late, publishing his first novel Lanark at the age of 46 in 1981. Devolution was never enough for the author, who agreed with Margaret Thatcher when she claimed Tony Blair as her greatest achievement.
Unlike Lanark, Gray’s epic debut novel from 1981, Purgatory is a short read at around 130 pages.

As the book’s subtitle makes clear, Dante’s medieval poem has been ‘englished in prosaic verse’ and Gray does away with the terza rima rhyme scheme employed in the original Italian. Alasdair Gray's translation of Dante's Purgatory is 'readable and engaging'. Following on from his translation of Hell (published last year), Alasdair Gray has turned his attention to the second part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Data returned from the Piano 'meterActive/meterExpired' callback These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times. Any publication of new work by Alasdair Gray is a cultural event. The Guardian called it “fluent, imaginative”, a novel “of undeniable quality, but rare, and not for all tastes, like an oyster, or a truffle”.This truffle was soon compared to Joyce’s Ulysses, and was the making both of the author and his independent publisher, Canongate.

Alasdair Gray’s most popular book is Lanark. Where Purgatory really soars is in its final quarter, as Dante bids farewell to Virgil and ascends to the earthly paradise at Mount Purgatory’s pinnacle. Chris Dobson Such touches might please readers in the UK, but they don’t quite gel with the book’s mostly Italian cast of characters and places: Dante, after all, was born in Florence, then an independent republic. / Nectar they sang about was in these streams.” It is divided into 33 cantos – essentially chapters – each of which are divided in turn into three-line stanzas. If anything, Gray is too faithful to the spirit of Dante’s original work, with his Purgatory occasionally lapsing into dull Christian moralising and reflective philosophising. Poor Things, a patchwork of Victorian fragments, returned to tricksier territory, charting Bella Baxter’s rise from the creation of gifted surgeon Godwin Bysshe Baxter to become her own woman. Alasdair has 12 jobs listed on their profile. ‘Purgatorio’, as envisioned by Dante and retold by Gray, is essentially centrist: a spiritual middle ground. Picture: Colin Mearns

However, a more radical revisioning of Dante’s original might have resulted in a work more immediately relevant to today’s times, instead of just another translation among many. Part of a trilogy, Purgatory could certainly be read as a stand-alone work, although its impact would be diminished without the context of what came before. As his literary reputation increased, winning both the Guardian fiction prize and the Whitbread novel award in 1992, the elaborate illustrations he created for his books began to draw attention to the pictorial art Gray had been producing all along. Alasdair Gray has 74 books on Goodreads with 1625 ratings. Some cantos even end in a cliffhanger, making Purgatory surprisingly readable and engaging; this is no stuffy old classic. Gray convincingly conveys Dante’s awe as he sets eyes on what no living human has seen since the time of Adam and Eve: “Ancient poets spoke of a Golden Age / when all was good and nothing went amiss. “Give me your full attention now,” Virgil commands Dante, and the same is required of the reader as the poet continues: “Concentrate your analytic mind / on truth that Plato gave humanity / before Epictetus made scholars blind.” Surface Studio, Surface Laptop, Surface Pro: what's the difference? The middle section, meanwhile, is more slow-going, especially for readers interested in medieval history and culture.
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But alongside his writing, Gray carried on painting. A experimental, pornographic fantasy – 1982, Janine – followed three years later, with his rambunctious reworking of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Poor Things, appearing in 1992.

The slog up Mount Purgatory feels at times all too real, with Dante coming across many of the same deadly sins already encountered in Hell.

In this new version of Dante’s masterpiece, Alasdair Gray offers an original translation in prosaic English rhyme. The writer and artist Alasdair Gray, who blazed a trail for contemporary Scottish fiction with his experimental novels, has died aged 85.Gray’s publisher Canongate announced the news on Sunday, saying he died early in the morning after being hospitalised for a short illness in his home city of Glasgow. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . Gray should be applauded for bringing this oft-overlooked classic to the attention of modern readers in his accessible translation.


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