Alan Warner (born 1964) is a Scottish novelist who grew up in Connel, near Oban. His notable novels include Morvern Callar and The Sopranos – the latter being the inspiration for the play Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour and its subsequent film adaptation, Our Ladies. Life and career Early life Warner's father was a Yorkshireman who served in World War Two. His parents were in their forties when he was born, and ran a coal delivery business in Mull, a shop in Kilchoan, and a small hotel in Oban, before in 1963 buying the 42-bedroom Marine Hotel, close to Oban ferry terminal. He attended Oban High School, and his interest in reading was sparked when he was fifteen, after he bought three novels whose covers suggested stories with a sexual dimension: Charles Webb's The Graduate, André Gide's The Immoralist and Albert Camus' The Outsider. He explained in an interview with the Scottish Review of Books in 2011: "I had presumed novels were an art form which only happened elsewhere and had died out in Scotland around the time of Walter Scott. What a very curious but genuine assumption. On the other hand, I could argue this was because local bookshops were stuffed with Scott and not a single work of modern Scottish literature." After moving to London, he studied at Ealing College. On his return to Scotland he studied at Glasgow University, where he wrote a dissertation on Joseph Conrad and the theme of suicide. He then spent some time participating in the Spanish rave scene, before working in Scotland as a train driver's assistant, musician and barman. Novels and other fiction Warner's debut novel, the acclaimed Morvern Callar (1995), won a Somerset Maugham Award. It was followed by These Demented Lands (1997), which won the Encore Award. His third novel The Sopranos (1998) won the Saltire Society's Scottish Book of the Year Award. Since then he has published The Man Who Walks (2002), an imaginative and surreal black comedy; The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven (2006), which imagines the reminiscences of a sickly Spanish playboy;The Stars in the Bright Sky (2010), a sequel to The Sopranos; The Deadman's Pedal (2012), a coming-of-age novel set in 1973-4; Their Lips Talk of Mischief (2015), a comedy about two aspiring writers in Thatcher's Britain; and Kitchenly 434 (2021), a comedic satire set in the 1970s about a British rock star and