Classic of the week

Lanark
Alasdair Gray, Canongate, £8.99
Old joke. Two Scotsmen meet in the afterlife. One says: "Call this heaven? It's very little better than Glasgow." And the other replies: "What made you think this was heaven?" In Alasdair Gray's Lanark, hell -- a dark city called Unthank -- heaven and most places in between are versions of Glasgow. His hero, sometimes called Lanark and sometimes Duncan Thaw, travels between them in search of the good life. His author, meanwhile, flits between the mundane and the visionary. A strange, wonderful novel.