Lanark

Alasdair Gray · 1981 CE · Novel · English · Contemporary

A young man arrives with no memory in Unthank, a sunless city where people contract diseases that turn them into dragons and mouths open in the pavement to swallow them. Folded inside that story is another: Duncan Thaw, a Glasgow art student in the postwar years, painting a church ceiling and failing to be loved. Glasgow and its infernal double; a portrait of the artist split across two worlds.

Open Lanark in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Lineage

• reworks ↑ The Divine Comedy
  Dante · c. 1320 CE · Poem

Attributes

Closest analogues

• The Interpreters
  Wole Soyinka · 1965 CE · Novel

  60% · 13 shared
  NovelPsychologicalIsolation & AlienationIdentity & SelfPower & CorruptionArt & CreationContemporaryEverymanCreatorNonlinear / FracturedThe Cityvs Societyvs Self
• The Golden Notebook
  Doris Lessing · 1962 CE · Novel

  56% · 14 shared
  NovelPsychologicalIdentity & SelfArt & CreationContemporaryThe DoubleCreatorNonlinear / FracturedFrame NarrativeThe Cityvs Societyvs SelfMetafictionalEnglish
• The Box Man
  Kōbō Abe · 1973 CE · Novel

  51% · 13 shared
  NovelPsychologicalIsolation & AlienationIdentity & SelfContemporaryEverymanThe DoubleNonlinear / FracturedThe Cityvs Societyvs SelfAbsurdistMetafictional
• The Hour of the Star
  Clarice Lispector · 1977 CE · Novel

  51% · 12 shared
  NovelPsychologicalIsolation & AlienationIdentity & SelfArt & CreationContemporaryEverymanCreatorThe Cityvs Societyvs SelfMetafictional
• 62: A Model Kit
  Julio Cortázar · 1968 CE · Novel

  51% · 12 shared
  NovelFantasyPsychologicalIsolation & AlienationIdentity & SelfContemporaryThe DoubleNonlinear / FracturedDual WorldThe Cityvs SelfMetafictional
• The History of the Siege of Lisbon
  José Saramago · 1989 CE · Novel

  48% · 12 shared
  NovelIdentity & SelfArt & CreationContemporaryEverymanCreatorFrame NarrativeDual WorldThe Cityvs Societyvs SelfMetafictional