L'inspecteur Ray Lennox a quitté Édimbourg pour Miami après une dépression due à l'abus de stress et de cocaïne et à une sale affaire d'infanticides sexuels. Mais sa fiancée ne songe qu'à préparer leur mariage et il se retrouve seul et désoeuvré en Floride. Quand un toxico lui présente une fillette de dix ans victime de prédation sexuelle, Lennox décide de la protéger, à tout prix...
Renton le malin, Sick Boy l'ambitieux, Begbie le fou, Spud l'égaré : quatre jeunes d'Édimbourg avec l'héroïne, la bière et l'ivresse comme ciment et poison de leur relation. Chronique d'une époque, d'une ville et d'une société écrite en 1993, ce premier roman, pendant écossais - l'humour en plus - de Retour à Brooklyn d'Hubert Selby Jr, fut adapté au cinéma par Danny Boyle et devint en dix ans une référence sociale et culturelle mondiale. C'est aujourd'hui un classique dans une nouvelle traduction qui rend justice à la voix d'Irvine Welsh.
Deux ouragans menacent Édimbourg, mais si l'un est bien un phénomène climatique, l'autre est Terry « Juice » Lawson, un arnaqueur érotomane sans vergogne déjà rencontré dans Trainspotting 2 et L'Artiste au couteau. Embarquant au passage trois autres compères plus chaotiques les uns que les autres, il va déraper jusqu'à découvrir le secret de ses origines... et les joies insoupçonnées du golf.
Humour noir et rédemption : une comédie sauvage où le champion du roman social dézingue joyeusement les derniers tabous de l'Angleterre.
Lucy, coach de fitness narcissique, méprise les gros, les faibles, les ratés. Or elle va se trouver mise au défi de transformer Léna, le genre de fille qu'elle n'aurait même jamais pensé croiser. Dans une Floride décadente obsédée par le corps, s'engage entre les deux femmes une amitié ambivalente et extrême qui va les métamorphoser.
Dans les banlieues miteuses d'Édimbourg chères à Welsh, quatre enfants de la bagarre et des pubs enfumés, avec la glu de l'amitié contre vents et marées. Trente ans de culture musicale et politique, du punk à la techno, de l'héroïne à l'ecstasy, d'explosion sociale et littéraire.
Trente ans de fermetures d'usines, de thatchérisme sauvage, de mutations, de petites et grandes tragédies ordinaires. Et pour eux, nés laissés-pour-compte, trente ans à chercher avec leur langue et dans leurs mots, ceux de la rue, leur place d'hommes.
Charlatan pour les uns, visionnaire pour les autres, le terrible Begbie est devenu un artiste bien installé en Californie. Mais un drame le ramène à Édimbourg où il retrouve sa vieille communauté. Là, entre un passé violent et un présent psychotique, les choses vont tourner vraiment mal, vraiment vite...
Au département de la Santé et de l'Hygiène d'Édimbourg, où il inspecte les meilleures tables de la ville, Danny Skinner, fêtard et coureur notoire, est pris au piège de ses pulsions autodestructrices. L'arrivée de Brian Kibby, innocent amateur de modèles réduits, déclenche chez lui une haine d'une puissance inattendue. Et quand Kibby est atteint par un mystérieux virus, Skinner comprend qu'un lien surnaturel les unit.
Sous ce ressort de fable gothique, Welsh poursuit son exploration ironique des âmes urbaines et nous livre un extraordinaire Portrait de Dorian Gray du vingt-et-unième siècle.
Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy et Spud, quatre vrais potes de galère, traînent leurs désillusions dans le huis-clos froid et pluvieux d'Édimbourg. Tout bascule lorsque Sick Boy rencontre une étudiante incroyablement belle et brillante avec qui il décide de produire le porno du siècle.
*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*Mark Renton is finally a success. An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and - much to Mark's astonishment - doesn't seem interested in revenge. Sick Boy and Spud, who have agendas of their own, are intrigued to learn that their old friends are back in town, but when they enter the bleak world of organ-harvesting, things start to go so badly wrong. 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. One of these four will not survive to the end of this book. Which one of them is wearing Dead Men's Trousers? Fast and furious, scabrously funny and weirdly moving, this is a spectacular return of the crew from Trainspotting.
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. But his fiancée Trudi is only interested in planning their wedding, and soon Lennox cast adrift, alone in Florida. A coke-fuelled binge brings him into contact with another victim of sexual predation, ten-year-old Tianna, and Lennox flees across the state with his terrified charge, determined to protect her at any cost. But can Lennox trust his own instincts? And can he handle Tianna, while still trying to get to grips with the Edinburgh murder?
Glue is the 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.As we follow their lives from the 70's into the new century - from punk to techno, from speed to Es - we can see each of them trying to struggle out from under the weight of the conditioning of class and culture, peer pressure and their parents' hopes that maybe their sons will do better than they did. 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: back up your mates, don't hit women and, most importantly, never grass - on anyone.
In 'Rattlesnakes', three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, held captive by armed Mexicans; in 'The DOGS of Lincoln Park', a mysterious Korean chef may or may not have something to do with the disappearance of a socialite's pooch; an English bar owner battles to keep all his balls in the air on the Costa Brava; a film biographer becomes a piece of movie memorabilia himself in 'Miss Arizona'; and in the 'Kingdom of Fife'; 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. But the arrival of the virginal, model-railway enthusiast Brian Kibby at the department provokes an uncharacteristic response in Skinner, and threatens to throw his mission off course. Consumed by loathing for his nemesis, Skinner enacts a curse, and when Kibby contracts a horrific and debilitating mystery virus, Skinner understands that their destinies are supernaturally bound, and he is faced with a terrible dilemma.
Lloyd from Leith has a transfiguring passion for the unhappily married Heather. Together they explore the true nature of house music and chemical romance. Will their ardour fizzle and die or will it ignite and blaze like a thousand suns? Ecstasy follows them and others through the backstreets of Edinburgh, stifling suburban sitting rooms and the bright lights of London. Exhilarating and dazzling, this is Welsh at his very best.
The characters in this extraordinary book are often - on the surface - depraved, vicious, cowardly and manipulative, but their essential humanity is never undermined. Two professors of philosophy turn pugilists; Leith removal men become the objects of desire for Hollywood goddesses; God turns Boab Coyle into a house-fly; and in the novella, 'A Smart Cunt', the drug-addled young hero spins off on a collision course with his past. The Acid House is a bizarre, disturbing and hilarious collection from one of the most uncompromising and original writers around.
Roy Strang is engaged in a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission is to eradicate an evil predator-scavenger bird, the marabou stork, before it drives away the peace-loving flamingo from the picturesque Lake Torto. 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. As one world crashes into the other, this potentially charming story of ornithological goodwill mutates into a filthy tale of violence, abuse and redemption.
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. Having failed spectacularly as a hustler, pimp, husband, father and businessman, Sick Boy taps into an opportunity which to him represents one last throw of the dice. However, to realise his ambitions within the Adult industries, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton. Still scheming, still scamming, Sick Boy and Renton soon find out that they have unresolved issues to address concerning the unhinged Begbie, the troubled, drug-addled Spud, but, most of all, with each other.T2 Trainspotting was previously published as Porno.
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.
In Reheated Cabbage you can enjoy Christmas dinner with Begbie and discover how aliens addicted to Embassy Regal have Midlothian under surveillance. You will meet a husband who values a televised Hibs v Hearts game more than his wife's life and see two guys fighting over a beautiful girl agree - after a few pills and pints of lager - that their friendship is actually more important. And you will be delighted to welcome back 'Juice' Terry Lawson, and to watch what happens when he meets his old nemesis under the strobe-lights of a Miami Beach nightclub.
In 'A Fault on the Line', a Hearts-Hibernian football match is on television, and a Sunday afternoon trip to a beer garden with the family is an unwelcome distraction for former trackman Malky. The day ends badly when he decides to hurry them home in time for kick-off.In 'Elspeth's Boyfriend', it's Christmas day in Leith, and Frank is suffering from the previous evening's excesses. He doesn't take kindly to his sister's fancy new boyfriend. Frank's grumblings about the choice of television programmes develop into a more serious confrontation when a spot of unwanted physical contact causes tempers to flare.In 'Kissing and Making Up', a drunk seeking an outlet for his frustrations heads to a strip club in the early afternoon. There, however, he only manages to make things worse.Part of the Storycuts series, these three stories were previously published in the collection Reheated Cabbage.
A homophobic Scottish labourer in London dies, and is condemned to confront his prejudices in the afterlife. A story about how tragedy can be casually courted when we ignore mental and physical cues, and turn our backs on the past.Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in the collection Reheated Cabbage.
In the tropics of Miami, retired Scottish schoolteacher Albert Black mourns his wife of forty-one years. His grief and inability to connect with his son's Americanised family combine to undermine the Christian ethos that has governed his life. Dejected, he summons a final rallying of his principles and seeks out a confrontation with a former pupil. Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in the collection Reheated Cabbage.
