The anthology features such stories as James Kelman's The Busconductor Hines, on the life of a bus conductor in Glasgow, Alison Fell's There's Tradition for You, an art model's rant, and Duncan McLean's Hours of Darkness, the impact on a community of the arrival of a stranger.

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‘Usually in diaspora, the intelligence of the Scots is recognized worldwide. These stories show that this capacity is now flourishing at home’ Ross Leckie, The Times ‘There could be not be a more heartening showcase of talent. A showcase, incidentally, that will remind those in need of it that in the past few decades Scottish fiction has been creating some of the most powerful, vibrant writing to be found anywhere . . . It will be a hard-hearted reader who does not emerge with a profound respect forthe imagination and scope of contemporary Scottish writing’ Rosemary Goring, Scotland on Sunday ‘It always helps to know where the editorial line of an anthology is coming from. This one, I can guarantee you, comes straight from the horse’s mouth’ Jenny Turner, Independent on Sunday ‘English north of the border is displayed in an exhilarating diversity of timbre and voice, with little sign of a cultural cringe towards standardization’ Tom Deveson, Sunday Times

This book argues for the ethical relevancy of contemporary fiction at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Through reading novels by such writers as David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, and Irvine Welsh, this book looks at how these works seek to transform the ways that readers live in the world.

Often dismissed as sensationalist, transgressive fiction is a sophisticated movement with roots in Menippean satire and the Rabelaisian carnal folk sensibility praised by Bakhtin. This study, the first of its kind, provides a thorough literary background and analysis of key transgressive authors such as Acker, Amis, Carter, Ellis, and Palahniuk.

Beat literature? Have not the great canonical names long grown familiar? Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. Likewise the frontline texts, still controversial in some quarters, assume their place in modern American literary history. On the Road serves as Homeric journey epic. "Howl" amounts to Beat anthem, confessional outcry against materialism and war. Naked Lunch, with its dark satiric laughter, envisions a dystopian world of power and word virus. But if these are all essentially America-centered, Beat has also had quite other literary exhalations and which invite far more than mere reception study. These are voices from across the Americas of Canada and Mexico, the Anglophone world of England, Scotland or Australia, the Europe of France or Italy and from the Mediterranean of Greece and the Maghreb, and from Scandinavia and Russia, together with the Asia of Japan and China. This anthology of essays maps relevant other kinds of Beat voice, names, texts. The scope is hemispheric, Atlantic and Pacific, West and East. It gives recognition to the Beat inscribed in languages other than English and reflective of different cultural histories. Likewise the majority of contributors come from origins or affiliations beyond the US, whether in a different English or languages spanning Spanish, Danish, Turkish, Greek, or Chinese. The aim is to recognize an enlarged Beat literary map, its creative internationalism.

Offering analysis of the fiction of 15 authors for whom the setting greatly contributes to their overall literary style, this book focuses on the many ways that "place" figures in modern crime and mystery novels. The authors (and their settings) are: Georges Simenon (Paris), Donna Leon (Venice), Tony Hillerman (American Southwest), Walter Mosley (South Central Los Angeles), George P. Pelecanos (Washington, D.C.), Sara Paretsky (Chicago), James Lee Burke (Southern Louisiana), Carl Hiaasen (South Florida), Ian Rankin (Edinburgh), Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana), James McClure (South Africa), Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (Stockholm), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico City), Leonardo Sciascia (Sicily) and Lindsey Davis (Ancient Rome).