num_pages: 217
description: Mr Alfred, a mere MA (ord.) and author of an unpublished volume of poetry, is an unloved alcoholic and middle-aged schoolmaster at a comprehensive school in Glasgow. Socially inadequate, he has a glimpse of happiness in his innocent but obsessive love for Rose, one of his pupils. This `affair' is maliciously reported by a mother with a grudge and Mr Alfred is transferred to an even rougher school. Defeated in the true life of the imagination that was the theme of his rejected poems, he builds up his own resistance movement to the intrusive authority of the real world. Against a nightmarish background of gang warfare and public desecration, the novel reaches a frightening climax.
language: English
title: Mr. Alfred M.A.
titlecomplete: Mr. Alfred M.A.
characters: Gerald Provan
genres: Fiction, Scotland
ratings_count: 40
places: Glasgow, Scotland
publisher: Calder Publications Ltd.