"Taking its name from the clock-tower of South Queensferry's Town Hall, where Duncan McLean worked as a janitor, Clocktower Press has published some of the most challenging and important writing to come out of Britain since the War."
In 1990, when the first of the series of simply produced, primary-coloured pamphlets appeared, there was a strong sense of a Scottish samizdat. Here you could read early drafts of Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting", James Kelman's "How Late It Was, How Late" or Janice Galloway's "Foreign Parts", alongside experimental work by the best young Scottish authors: James Meek, Alan Warner, Alison Kermack. In its quiet but authoritative way, Clocktower repeatedly broke new ground.
With Scottish fiction increasingly acknowledged as the most exciting and innovative now being written in these islands, 'Ahead of Its Time' brings together some of the freshest and most influential of the original Clocktower publications, and - as in the case of Galloway, Kelman, Warner and Welsh - new pieces written specially for this collection. It is a fitting tribute to a publisher truly ahead of its time.
