He is called "the Scottish Celine of the 1990s" (Guardian) and "a mad, postmodern Roald Dahl" (Weekend Scotsman). Using a range of approaches from bitter realism to demented fantasy, Irvine Welsh is able to evoke the essential humanity, well hidden as it is, of his generally depraved, lazy, manipulative, and vicious characters. He specializes particularly in cosmic reversals God turn a hapless footballer into a fly; an acid head and a newborn infant exchange consciousnesses with sardonically unexpected results always displaying a corrosive wit and a telling accuracy of language and detail....
He is called "the Scottish Celine of the 1990s" (Guardian) and "a mad, postmodern Roald Dahl" (Weekend Scotsman). Using a range of approaches from bit...
The acclaimed author of the cult classics Trainspotting and The Acid House, Irvine Welsh has been hailed as "the best thing that has happened to British writing in a decade" (London Sunday Times). This audacious novel is a brilliant (and literal) head trip of a book that brings us into the wildly active, albeit coma-beset, mind of Roy Strang, whose hallucinatory quest to eradicate the evil predator/scavenger marabou stork keeps being interrupted by grisly memories of the social and family dysfunction that brought him to this state. It is the sort of lethally funny cocktail of pathos,...
The acclaimed author of the cult classics Trainspotting and The Acid House, Irvine Welsh has been hailed as "the best thing that has happened to Briti...
In "Lorraine Goes to Livingston," a bestselling authoress of Regency romances, paralyzed and bedridden, plans her revenge on gambling, whoring husband with the aid of her nurse Lorraine. In "Fortune's Always Hiding," flawed beauty Samantha Worthington enlists a smitten young soccer thug to find the man who marketed the drug that crippled her from birth--in order to give his a taste of his own disastrous medicine. In the upbeat final tale "The Undefeated," we experience the transfiguring passion of the miserably married young yuppie Heather and the raver Lloyd from Leith--a grand affair played...
In "Lorraine Goes to Livingston," a bestselling authoress of Regency romances, paralyzed and bedridden, plans her revenge on gambling, whoring husband...
The story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh projects, Glue is about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold friends together through three decades. The boys become men: Juice Terry, the work-shy fanny-merchant, with corkscrew curls and sticky fingers; Billy the boxer, driven, controlled, playing to his strengths; Carl, the Milky Bar Kid, drifting along to his own soundtrack; and the doomed Gally, exceedingly thin-skinned and vulnerable to catastrophe at every turn. We follow their lives from the seventies into the new century from punk to techno, from speed to E....
The story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh projects, Glue is about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold friends together ...
In the world ofPorno, however, even the cons are conned. Sick Boy and Renton jockey for top dog. The out-of-jail and in-for-revenge Begbie is on the loose. But it's the hapless, drug-addled Spud who may be spreading the most trouble. Porno is a novel about the Trainspotting crew ten years further down the line: still scheming, still scamming, still fighting for the first-class seats as the train careens at high velocity with derailment looming around the next corner.
In the world ofPorno, however, even the cons are conned. Sick Boy and Renton jockey for top dog. The out-of-jail and in-for-revenge Begbie is o...
This story of two men locked in a war of wills that threatens their very existence is vintage Irvine Welsh. Troubled restaurant inspector Danny Skinner is on a quest to find the mysterious father his mother will not identify. Unraveling this hidden information is the key to understanding the crippling compulsions that threaten to wreck his young life. His ensuing journey takes him from the festival city of Edinburgh to the foodie city of San Francisco. But the hard-drinking, womanizing Skinner has a strange nemesis in the form of mild-mannered fellow inspector Brian Kibby. It is Skinner's...
This story of two men locked in a war of wills that threatens their very existence is vintage Irvine Welsh. Troubled restaurant inspector Danny Skinne...
In 1935, MGM studios embarked on a movie adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. The production called for the casting of many dwarfs to play the Munchkins of the mythical Land of Oz, and the studio began recruiting 'small persons' from all over the world.
During production, rumors spread around Hollywood of wild Munchkin sex orgies, drunken behavior and general dwarf debauchery. More sinisterly, a Munchkin is said to have committed suicide by hanging himself on the set during filming--what appears to be a small human body is clearly visible hanging from a tree in...
In 1935, MGM studios embarked on a movie adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. The production called for the casting of many dwa...
Within the sound-proofed walls of a disused recording studio, a score is being settled. Two inner city low-lifes take the law into their own hands to satisfy their craving for fun, fear and a freakish sense of justice. "You'll Have Had Your Hole" premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and toured internationally - although it was banned in Belgium.
A play from the author of Trainspotting
Within the sound-proofed walls of a disused recording studio, a score is being settled. Two inner cit...
Arthur Wharton was the world's first black professional footballer and 100 yards world record holder, and was probably the first African to play professional cricket in the Yorkshire and Lancashire leagues. His achievements were accomplished against the backdrop of Africa's forced colonization by European regimes. But while Arthur was beating the best on the tracks and fields of Britain, the peoples of the continent of his birth were being recast as lesser human beings. The tall Ghanaian was an extreme irritation to many white supremacists because his education and sporting triumphs refuted...
Arthur Wharton was the world's first black professional footballer and 100 yards world record holder, and was probably the first African to play profe...