Alasdair Gray was a Scottish writer and artist.

His magnum opus Lanark (1981) features a skin disease called ‘dragonhide’.

Adjectives applicable to this work are grotesque, fantastique and rabelaisian.

The book has a tendency to depress.

Update: The skin disease ‘dragonhide’ reminds me of Maldoror: “I am filthy. I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit. My skin is encrusted with the scabs and scales of leprosy, and covered with yellowish pus.”