Nothing is more threatening to the establishment than the disclosure of its hidden roots.

The controversy following his award of the Booker Prize for the 1994 novel How Late it Was How Late proved it. Many critics seemed willing to bestow their mottled respect upon this upstart but only on the proviso that they could declare his work difficult. And it would be difficult if your values were cryogenically frozen in a gentile sitcom with belching vicars. Kelman is not difficult just challenging. Comparisons with Franz Kafka are not cheap. There is the same need to deal with the lack of confidence and control that shape our lives. The same use of self destructive inner dialogue. And no trace of the usual literary voyeurism.

His most recent novel 'Kieron Smith, boy' sees his finely crafted and mesmeric narrative explore the instilled fears of childhood. We follow Kieron through from the age of five with issues and language changing as the boy grows. Familiar themes are explored in the way we are limited and exploited through language and the manners of our class system, but this feels more important than previously.

This work may not be his best in terms of its intensity and profound use of dialect but it touches upon an issue that even those who share his socialist leanings shy away from. Deep rooted self censorship is hard to confess to and understand, and this allows others to speak for us. Kieron Smith, boy does not speak for us either. The narrative mimics that of a Glasgow child in such a seamless manner that it takes time to find ourselves within it at all, but he is one of the few writers with the empathy to help us start. As much as that grandiose idea would probably disgust him.