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Incendiary and heartrending, the sixteen essays in The State Is the Enemy lay bare government brutality against the working class, immigrants, asylum-seekers, ethnic minorities, and all who are deemed of “a lower order.” Drawing parallels between atrocities committed against the Kurds by the Turkish State, and the racist police brutality, and government sanctioned murders in the UK, James Kelman shatters the myth of Western exceptionalism,revealing the universality of terror campaigns levied against the most vulnerable, and calling on a global citizenship to stand in solidarity with victims of oppression. Kelman’s case against the Turkish and British governments is not just a litany of murders, or an impassioned plea—it is a cool-headed take down of the State and an essential primer for revolutionaries.
“James Kelman changed my life."
—Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
“Probably the most influential novelist of the post-war period.”
—The Times
“Kelman has the knack, maybe more than anyone since Joyce, of fixing in his writing the lyricism of ordinary people’s speech … Pure aesthete, undaunted democrat—somehow Kelman manages to reconcile his two halves.”
—Esquire (London)
“The greatest British novelist of our time.”
—Sunday Herald
“A true original … A real artist … it’s now very difficult to see which of his peers can seriously be ranked alongside [Kelman] without ironic eyebrows being raised.”
—Irvine Welsh, Guardian
“A writer of world stature, a 21st century Modern.”
—The Scotsman
“The real reason Kelman, despite his stature and reputation, remains something of a literary outsider is not, I suspect, so much that great, radical Modernist writers aren’t supposed to come from working-class Glasgow, as that great, radical Modernist writers are supposed to be dead. Dead, and wrapped up in a Penguin Classic: that’s when it’s safe to regret that their work was underappreciated or misunderstood (or how little they were paid) in their lifetimes. You can write what you like about Beckett or Kafka and know they’re not going to come round and tell you you’re talking nonsense, or confound your expectations with a new work. Kelman is still alive, still writing great books, climbing.”
—James Meek, London Review of Books
“The greatest living British novelist.”
—Amit Chaudhuri, author of A New World
“What an enviably, devilishly wonderful writer is James Kelman.”
—John Hawkes, author of The Blood Oranges
2. Oppression and Solidarity
3. The Freedom for Freedom of Expression Rally Istanbul 1997
4. A Press Conference in Turkey
5. Em Hene!
6. Solidarity With İsmail Beşikçi
7. The University of Strathclyde Students’ Association Grants Honorary Life Membership to Abdullah Öcalan
8. But What Is It They Are Trying to Express?
9. Who’s Kidding Who?
10. Nobody Can Represent a Grieving Family
11. Evidence Provides the Pattern, The Pattern Reveals the Crime
12. Pernicious Fabrications
13. A Notorious Case
14. Murder in The Line of Duty
15. Arise Ye Torturers-To-The Crown
16. Home Truths (Or Endnote)
Addendum: The 1997 Gathering in Istanbul for Freedom Of Expression
Index