What are the political commitments and activism of the writer James Kelman? What is the relationship between his fictional writings, his political and social critical writings and his political activism and campaigning? The book investigates the inter-relationships of these aspects of James Kelman’s work, and examines how their effects and implications play out in society and the city through time and space.

Whereas many previous critiques insist on the incompatibility of his political writings and his fiction, this is the first full-length piece to fully address the question. This work uses an examination of private footage of Kelman’s Glasgow 1990 conference with Noam Chomsky, George Davie and others, an interview with his collaborators, and analysis of political and fictional texts as its sources of evidence.