Canongate is to publish a new collection of the complete short stories of Alasdair Gray.

Entitled Every Short Story By Alasdair Gray, this will comprise 75 stories from the septuagenarian polymath and author of Lanark. The collection will contain twelve new tales, as well as gathering together work from six collections previously published over the course of sixty years by various of Gray’s publishers including Jonathan Cape, Bloomsbury, Penguin and Canongate.

A lavish £30 hardback edition, sumptuously illustrated throughout in the author’s characteristic style, will be published in August 2012 alongside the paperback of his Saltire Award-winning autopictography, A Life in Pictures.

Glasgow-born writer and artist Alasdair Gray rose to fame with his debut novel, Lanark, which had reviewers comparing him to Orwell, Joyce, Kafka and Dante. He has since published over twenty books, including the Whitbread Prizewinning Poor Things. His artwork was exhibited last year as part of the prestigious British Art Show, as well as in exhibitions at the Talbot Rice Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. His mural for the Hillhead underground station in his native Glasgow will be unveiled in 2012.

Canongate Editorial Director Francis Bickmore says:

“This is going to be a lavish and wonderful book, and a landmark from one of the world’s most important writers. I am passionate about Gray’s stories and feel evangelical about getting others reading them too. There’s such an astonishing range, from sexual comedy to science fiction, social realism to flights of fancy, but they all share Gray’s generosity of spirit, his sense of humour in adversity and a desire that our culture flourish by telling the truth. I believe future historians will find in Gray a visionary of the stature of Blake, Scott or Joyce.”

“A great writer, perhaps the greatest writer living in Britain today.” – Will Self

“One of the most gifted writers to have put pen to paper in the English language.” – Irvine Welsh

“A necessary genius.” – Ali Smith

“A genuine experimentalist.” – David Lodge

Source: Canongate Books