A Gift from Nessus

William McIlvanney

A Gift from Nessus by William McIlvanney (eBook ISBN 9781782111931) book cover

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‘The finest Scottish novelist of our time’ Telegraph

Eddie Cameron is a salesman for Rocklight Ltd., an electrical equipment firm in Glasgow, where he has been fiddling the firm’s expenses. Eddie’s life is in tatters - his wife hates him, and his violent temper has left his mistress teetering on the edge of sanity.


“There is a sense of moral growth in A Gift from Nessus that lifts it out of the ordinary … almost frighteningly truthful and moving”
the Times

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“McIlvanney is a compassionate writer and leaves an impression both of high seriousness and great charm”
sunday Telegraph

“William McIlvanney paints a world of harsh reality, but does so in language that is strangely beautiful and hauntingly poetic”
Craig Russell


William McIlvanney

William McIlvanney’s first novel, Remedy is None, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and with Docherty he won the Whitbread Award for Fiction. Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch both gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association. Strange Loyalties, the third in the Detective Laidlaw trilogy, won the Glasgow Herald’s People’s Prize. He died in December 2015.