Bøker av Irvine Welsh

'An unremitting powerhouse of a novel that marks the arrival of a major new talent. Trainspotting is a loosely knotted string of jagged, dislocated tales that lay bare the hearts of darkness of the junkies, wide-boys and psychos who ride in the down escalator of opportunity in the nation's capital.

*Number #1 Bestseller**BEFORE TRAINSPOTTING CAME SKAGBOYS Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a bright future.

Lurching from crisis to crisis, the four men circle each other, driven by their personal histories and addictions, confused, angry - so desperate that even Hibs winning the Scottish Cup doesn't really help.

The bestselling novel by Irvine Welsh that provided the inspiration for Danny Boyle s hit filmChoose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

Featuring murder, depravity and revenge - and enormous amounts of food and sex - The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins taps into two great obsessions of our time - how we look and where we live - and tells a story so subversive and dark it blacks out the Florida sun.

The characters in this extraordinary book are often - on the surface - depraved, vicious, cowardly and manipulative, but their essential humanity is never undermined. God turns Boab Coyle into a house-fly; The Acid House is a bizarre, disturbing and hilarious collection from one of the most uncompromising and original writers around.

Ten years on from Trainspotting Sick Boy is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London.

With the festive season almost upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is winding down at work and gearing up socially - kicking off Christmas with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam.

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller is back with a powerful, riveting new novel, as maverick investigator Ray Lennox discovers that confronting his past could cost him everything.OLD TRUTHS HAVE NEW CONSEQUENCESRay Lennox is determined to move on from his darkest days. The former detective has left Edinburgh for a fresh start in Brighton. Soon, his fixations and addictions have been replaced with quiet evenings and a rigorous fitness regime.Then Lennox meets Mathew Cardingworth. Rich, smooth-talking and immaculately dressed, he presents himself as a successful, and respectable, property developer. Yet their encounter reawakens memories that have haunted Lennox for decades, sending him into a spiral of confusion and rage.Lennox has no choice - he must confront the events of his childhood. But the more he identifies the links between Cardingworth, the disappearance of a group of foster care boys and the violence of his past, the more he finds himself asking:What will he sacrifice to achieve resolution at last?*****PRAISE FOR NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER IRVINE WELSH:'There's only one Welsh and you should be reading him'OBSERVER'The best thing that has happened to British writing for decades'SUNDAY TIMES'Powerful . . . A bracing and engaging read'DAILY TELEGRAPH'Sharp, fearless, passionate and brilliant'INDEPENDENT

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 unfathomable, obsessive hatred of Kibby that takes over everything, threatening to destroy not only Skinner and his mission but also those he loves most dearly. When Kibby contracts a horrific, undiagnosable illness, Skinner understands that his destiny is inextricably bound to that of his hated rival, and he is faced with a terrible dilemma. Irvine Welsh's work is a transgressive parable about the great obsessions of our time: food, sex, and celebrity.

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. Their mutual loyalty is fused in street morality: Back up your mates, don't hit women, and, most important, never snitch-on anyone.Glue has the Irvine Welsh trademarks-crackling dialogue, scabrous set pieces, and black, black humor-but it is also a grown-up book about growing up; about the way we live our lives, and what happens to us when things become unstuck.

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. Irvine Welsh is one hilariously dangerous writer who always creates a sensation.

They Don''t Think They''re Gonna Let You Stay in the Film Business Performers deals with masculinity at the point when the sexual revolution was saturating culture. For many working-class men, it was confusing and threatening. As secularism started to replace traditional Judaeo-Christian attitudes, a lot of men found themselves torn between embracing the liberation and clinging to the simpler, more morally binary past. In the swinging and hallucinogenic London of 1968, visionary Scottish filmmaker Donald Cammell joined forces with cinematographer Nicolas Roeg to make "Performance". The film would star James Fox, Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg, but the casting process was frustrating for Cammell because he insisted on bringing "real villains" into the roles that supported the lead character of South London gangster Chas Devlin. David Litvinoff, a chameleon like character who bridged the worlds of rock and roll and organized crime, was employed as dialogue coach because of his connections and he set about introducing "real villains" to Donald Cammell. What started out as an acting vehicle for Mick Jagger soon took detours as Cammell began experimenting with the script. He developed the theme of dualism and became inspired by the writings of Borges and the paintings of Francis Bacon. Violence, psychedelic drugs, sex and a homo-erotic subtext became enmeshed in a story about the fracturing of the male psyche. David Litvinoff persuaded many London criminals to audition for roles in the film. Performers is the story of two of them. On release, "Performance" was disowned by Warner Brothers, refused distribution, banned in certain countries and attacked by the mainstream media over its gratuitous sex, violence and illicit drug consumption. "Performance" did however go on to become a critical success and remains a cult classic. The filming took its toll on those involved though, most notably James Fox, who suffered a nervous breakdown and retired from acting for a period of time. Many believe that this was a result of Fox''s method acting and his submergence in the London criminal underworld in preparation for the role, which Cammell enthusiastically encouraged. Today the film is cited as a huge influence on director Martin Scorsese and many other filmmakers and has gained a place in pop culture as the "coolest" and most accurate portrayal of swinging London ever documented. "Performers" is a dark, subtle comedy with a cast of 4. A play of one scene, that narrates the story of two unwitting gangsters who find themselves auditioning for a part in the film. Homoerotic in parts, somewhat misogynistic, packed full of cultural reference points from the swinging sixties, the play presents an altogether inspiring twist on a classic casting couch situation.

LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Home by Salman RushdieDreams by Sigmund FreudEating by Nigella LawsonWork by Joseph Heller

Now a major film directed by Danny Boyle reuniting the cast of TrainspottingYears on from Trainspotting Sick Boy is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London.

But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies - and, most alarmingly, his former self - Francis seems to have other ideas.When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband's violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly.

With a rampaging force of nature is wreaking havoc on the streets of Edinburgh, but has top shagger, drug-dealer, gonzo-porn-star and taxi-driver, 'Juice' Terry Lawson, finally met his match in Hurricane 'Bawbag'?

Hilarious, shocking and hugely entertaining, Reheated Cabbage has all the classic Irvine Welsh ingredientsIn Reheated Cabbage you can enjoy Christmas dinner with Begbie and discover how aliens addicted to Embassy Regal have Midlothian under surveillance.

Detective Inspector Ray Lennox has fled to Miami to escape the aftermath of a mental breakdown induced by occupational stress and cocaine abuse, and a harrowing child-sex murder case back in Edinburgh.

In 'Rattlesnakes', three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, held captive by armed Mexicans; an ex-jockey and table-football star of Cowdenbeath takes on the charms of Jenni Cahill and her remarkable jodhpurs...

At Edinburgh's Department of Environmental Health, hard-drinking, womanising officer Danny Skinner wants to uncover secrets: 'the bedroom secrets of the master chefs', secrets he believes might just help him understand his self-destructive impulses.

A story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh schemes, and about the loyalties, the experiences - and the secrets - that hold them together into their thirties. What binds the four of them is the friendship formed by the scheme, their school, and their ambition to escape from both; their loyalty fused in street morality.

Roy Strang is engaged in a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. But behind this world lies another: the world of Roy's bizarre family, the Scottish housing scheme in which he grew up, his mundane job, a disastrous emigration to Africa, and his youthful life of brutality with a gang of soccer casuals.

This collection is made up of "The Granton Star Cause", "The Acid House" and "A Soft Touch". All three stories come from the badlands of the schemes of north Edinburgh and take us into a dark world of drugs, deviant sex and football hooliganism.