Rhianna Dhillon in conversation with Irvine Welsh on The Penguin Podcast

Interviews

The Penguin Podcast: Latitude special

Men in Love by Irvine Welsh

Extracts

Extract: Read the opening chapter from Men in Love by Irvine Welsh

A decorative banner featuring a portrait of Simon Prosser and a collage of images like a nuclear explosion and a graffiti peace sign

Penguin books that shocked society

Features

The Penguin books that shocked society

Resolution-Irvine-Extract-Header

Extract: Resolution by Irvine Welsh

21Qs-Irvine-Welsh_Main-1800x1200_Penguin

‘I don’t fear death’: 21 Questions with Irvine Welsh

Irvine-Welsh-WTSW_Hero-Desktop_Penguin

Reading lists

Where to start with Irvine Welsh

With the dawn of a new millennium about to break, the Nineties was a strange, floating decade of positivity, hope and something called the World Wide Web. 

1990-main-image-1800×1200.jpg

Books that defined the 1990s

6 of our favourite author cameos in films – did you spot them?

author-cameos-lee-child.jpg

Men in Love

Choose life. Choose love? The Trainspotting crew fall for rave and romance in Irvine Welsh’s exhilarating new novel. 
‘Propulsive, hilarious and bittersweet in equal measure’ GQ 
It’s the late 1980s. Separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption. 
Sick Boy begins an intense relationship with Amanda – rich, connected, his ‘princess’. When the pair set a date for their wedding, he sees a chance for his generation to take control at last. 
But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group’s dreams or just another doomed quest? 
*A Best Summer Read for the New York Times, Guardian, i Paper and Esquire* 
 
‘His paciest, funniest, most page-turning book in years’ SCOTSMAN 
‘There’s no slacking in either the pace or the energy’ FINANCIAL TIMES 
‘These characters remain alive on the page’ DAILY MAIL 
‘Brilliant’ SUNDAY EXPRESS 
**PRE-ORDER IRVINE WELSH’S NEXT NOVEL CAN NOTHING SAVE US? NOW** 
(Men in Love was a #4 Sunday Times bestseller, July 2025)

Like all his best work, Men in Love is propulsive, hilarious and bittersweet in equal measure, as wise on the curdling of intense teenage friendships as it is on the early, doomed attempts we embark on in our twenties to settle down and fall in love

The simple ease and joy with which he [Welsh] reinhabits these vivid characters makes this his paciest, funniest, most page-turning book in years

These characters remain alive on the page, more than 30 years on

There’s no slacking in either the pace or the energy of the prose. Chapters alternate the cacophonous voices of the four [Trainspotting crew members]… their words sing off the page… What Welsh does so brilliantly [is] mixing registers and revealing the unsuspected depths in his characters

The arrival of Trainspotting was an earth-shaking cultural moment and it had a huge influence on me… It shines with humour and friendship. Every character here is alive

DOUGLAS STUART, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo (on Trainspotting)

A new book by Irvine Welsh is always an event… No living author is as entertaining to read, or as skilled at capturing the ambivalence and beauty of male friendships

The voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent

So propulsive...about as much fun as you can have between two book covers

No one captures the competing affections and resentments that underpin lifelong friendships like Welsh

A bold, electric new chapter in the Trainspotting universe… Darkly funny, blisteringly sharp, and emotionally raw, Men in Love is a story about yearning, identity, and whether love can ever truly save us from ourselves

The Trainspotting boys grow up… There are plenty of moments that showcase Welsh at his best, impertinent and loose and attuned to the poetic cadence of everyday speech. When his writing hits these heights…it is hard not to be charmed by its flair and insolence

Drugs, bad sex, ripe Scottish vernacular… the colloquial vigour of the writing never flags

Men in Love takes you on a dark journey from the late-80s and beyond

The lads are feeling their way into the future, still themselves, still drawn to violence and addiction

Are the lads in Trainspotting ready to settle down? Irvine Welsh brings back his beloved Edinburgh ensemble for his new novel, Men in Love . . . [A] prodigiously gifted author . . . Very funny, shrewdly nailing the precise cultural, material and libidinal interests operating at any given moment . . . Begbie and Spud are surely two of the greatest comic creations of any writer in recent memory . . . Entertaining

Irvine Welsh was born and raised in Edinburgh. His first novel, Trainspotting, has sold over one million copies in the UK and was adapted into an era-defining film. He has written fifteen further novels, including the Sunday Times bestseller Men in Love and the Crime series, four books of shorter fiction and numerous plays and screenplays. Irvine Welsh currently lives between London, Edinburgh and Miami.

It’s the late 1980s. Separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption. 
 
Sick Boy begins an intense relationship with Amanda – rich, connected, his ‘princess’. When the pair set a date for their wedding, he sees a chance for his generation to take control at last. 
 
But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group’s dreams or just another doomed quest?

Resolution

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller is back with a powerful, thrilling new CRIME novel. 
A SHOCKING CRIME. A MAVERICK DETECTIVE.A FINAL CHANCE TO EXPOSE THE TRUTH. 
 
Ray Lennox is determined to escape his darkest days. The former inspector 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, a rich and smooth-talking property developer. Their encounter reawakens memories that have haunted Lennox for decades. 
 
Lennox has no choice – he must confront the events of his childhood. But as he is pulled into a world of violence and murder, 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 
‘Plot twists keep the pages turning’DAILY EXPRESS 
 (Irvine Welsh’s Resolution was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 15 Jul 2024)

Crime is by some distance Welsh's most restrained and thoughtful work

You never know what you're going to get with Irvine Welsh, other than guaranteed intelligence. But what you get in Crime is a triumph... There's only one Welsh and you should be reading him again

Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades

If you like your crime dramas Scottish and sweary, this one's for you

Trainspotting is the best book ever written by man or woman... Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible

Irvine Welsh is more than happy to assault current shibboleths… unsparing… caustic stuff.. those who relish his unvarnished, in-your-face narratives will get more than their money’s worth

Resolution continues the industrially gritty travails of Ray Lennox… slowly developing into one of Welsh’s most enigmatic, enduring and intriguing characters

Welsh’s crime trilogy reaches a grisly conclusion in this revenge tragedy… [the] plot twists keep the pages turning

There’s no denying…[Welsh’s] ability to plum the more toxic reaches of masculinity and the nightmares they conceal

OLD TRUTHS HAVE NEW CONSEQUENCES 
 
Ray Lennox is determined to move on from his darkest days. The maverick 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?

Trainspotting

A special edition of the cult classic

The arrival of Trainspotting was an earth-shaking cultural moment and it had a huge influence on me… This book sings and, in the darkest moments, it shines with humour and friendship. Every character here is alive

DOUGLAS STUART, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo

A beautiful hardback edition of the hilarious, dark, ingenious novel that changed the face of British fiction. 
 
Choose 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. 
 
'The best book ever written by man or woman... Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible' Rebel Inc 
 
'Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius' Sunday Times 
 
VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Bound to be beautiful

The Long Knives

The highly-anticipated second instalment in the CRIME trilogy, now a hit TV Series 
 
In Edinburgh, Detective Inspector Ray Lennox is investigating a brutal crime... 
 
Ritchie Gulliver MP is dead. Castrated and left to bleed in an empty Leith warehouse. Vicious, racist and corrupt, many thought he had it coming. But nobody could have predicted this. 
 
After the life Gulliver has led, the suspects are many - corporate rivals, political opponents, the countless groups he's offended. And the vulnerable and marginalised, who bore the brunt of his cruelty. 
 
As Lennox unravels the truth, and the list of shocking attacks grows, he must put his personal feelings aside. But one question refuses to go away: who are the real victims here? 
 
'Sharp, fearless, passionate and brilliant' Independent 
 
'An ingeniously plotted and propulsive thriller' Literary Review

An ingeniously plotted and propulsive thriller... bristling with risky satire and moral disgust.

If you like your crime dramas Scottish and sweary, this one's for you.

Evening Standard, *Books to Look Out For 2022*

A triumph... A great, redemptive book... It leaves you wanting more, much more

Powerful, passionate writing... Welsh gets it just right

Powerful... A bracing and engaging read

Sharp, fearless, passionate, and brilliant.

Intelligent, propulsive, passionate

Dead Men's Trousers

Fast and furious, scabrously funny and weirdly moving, this is the final chapter in the Trainspotting story.

Welsh is on compulsively readable, searingly funny form in what has been billed as the final Trainspotting novel… What I really like about Welsh’s storytelling is that he makes these amoral misadventures so propulsive, so joyfully awful, that you have to go with the flow… this roués’ romp is about as much fun as you can have between two book covers.

Dead Men’s Trousers is Welsh at his scabrous, foul-mouthed best as the Trainspotting crew of 
Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud are reunited in a high-velocity tale of drug dealing, 
prostitution and the Hollywood art scene – with the odd compulsory organ donation casually 
tossed in with sadistic aplomb.

Some things never change. Violence lurks beneath the surface. Football still resonates. And, best of all, the Scots dialect retains its colloquial zing. Welsh fans are in for another witty, scabrous treat.

Irresistible... No one captures the competing affections and resentments that underpin lifelong friendships like Welsh, and the original lads – Sick Boy and Spud in particular – still bring out the best in him... keeping you gripped and choking on bursts of shocked laughter.

A vignette-like study of modern masculinity… This final book in Welsh’s self-described “Harry Potter franchise” is as much character study as social commentary, and a sympathetic observation about how growing older doesn’t necessarily mean growing wiser.

Blackly funny... It’s ultimately a mark of Welsh’s magic in having created such memorable characters.

Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud are back in this wildly farcical story of revenge, sentimentality and psychedelic drugs... a whooping last hurrah (possibly) for the Trainspotting gang... very funny.

Crackling with energy and verve, it’s all brilliant fun... But the onset of middle age, and a shocking death add poignancy to [Dead Men’s Trousers].

Fast and furious, scabrously funny and weirdly moving, this is a spectacular return of the crew from Trainspotting.

**A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
Mark Renton from Trainspotting is back – and he’s 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? 
 
‘Welsh is on compulsively readable, searingly funny form’ The Times 
 
‘No one captures the competing affections and resentments that underpin lifelong friendships like Welsh’ Esquire

Vintage Minis

Rave

Vintage Minis bring you the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human – from birth to death and everything in between

Irvine Welsh, 'poet laureate of the chemical generation', exposes the seamy underbelly of rave’s utopian dream. Lloyd, our permanently pilled-up protagonist, pushes his weekends to breaking point and beyond in this frazzled trip through Scottish clubland. He experiences the vertiginous uppers and downers of the Second Summer of Love, dabbles in a spot of disc jockeying and closes in, gradually, on some kind of redemption… 
 
Selected from Irvine Welsh's novel Ecstasy. 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
Also in the Vintage Minis series: 
Home by Salman Rushdie 
Dreams by Sigmund Freud 
Eating by Nigella Lawson 
Work by Joseph Heller

The Blade Artist

The most terrifying character in Trainspotting returns – with his own novel

Back to his violent best… Dark, gruesome and captivating.

It’s a thriller in the mode of Tarantino making war films or westerns; hiding grand themes within genre.

Intense, electrifying… Welsh has delivered a tremendously entertaining book – a whodunit, a thriller, and a probing character study – that’s obsessed with conflict, both physical and mental… A surprisingly poignant, evocative read – highly recommended.

In a year when filming begins on Danny Boyle’s sequel of sorts to Trainspotting, it seems perfect timing to revisit its most visceral force.

[Begbie’s] intelligence and instinct make him compelling, and Welsh keep the plot roaring along… This is a dark, guilty pleasure and written with – it seems to me – the cinema screen in mind.

Welsh's ear for dialect is superb, and the opportunity to observe Edinburgh's dark underbelly from the perspective of someone used to a gentler lifestyle far away leads to shrewd cultural insights.

While Welsh’s sense of humour is never far from the surface of his writings…this is very much a work of dark crime fiction rather than comedy or social satire with a touch of James Ellroy.

The Blade Artist is lean...clever and propulsive. The shorter length concentrates Welsh’s energy… There is a reason people still read him.

No one writes about violence and class with such wit and insight as Welsh. He’s a social satirist of the highest order and, with its themes of vengeance and redemption, this is a deceptively comic book with a very dark heart.

Welsh may be a reformed character but he's still got it, and The Blade Artist is fab.

This Ultra-violent but curiously redemptive new novel is both elegant and electrifying.

An ultra-violent odyssey through the darkest recesses of urban life.

Unique mix of raw Scots dialect, ultra-violence and sickening social comedy.

Offers biting social commentary and razor-sharp humour.

Welsh with his trademark wit and observation unpeels a layer of his character to offer an unsettling glimpse into Begbie’s psyche.

The dialogue is zippy, the pace rarely flags and Welsh is excellent on the milieu of the ageing career hard-man.

Maintains his forensic command of the Edinburgh demotic.

Welsh shows his hardman character in a new light.

Disturbing but also intensely gripping… If you’re a fan of intense character studies, you’ll kick yourself –violently- if you miss it.

Especially intriguing… it’s Welsh’s prose that gives the story its edge… The language really gets into your head, and you start thinking in Scots, and it’s one of the most immersive literary devices I’ve ever encountered

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. 
 
But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. 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. 
 
The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel – ultra violent but curiously redemptive – and it marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.

T2 Trainspotting

Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie and Spud are back – now a major film directed by Danny Boyle reuniting the cast of Trainspotting

Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie and Spud are back… 
 
Years 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. 
 
‘Highly entertaining’ Sunday Times 
‘Captures and celebrates the hangover of youth’ Observer 
‘Funny and eloquently obscene’ Daily Telegraph

A brilliant satirical study of the ugly dynamic which draws together predators and prey

Not for the fainthearted... Highly entertaining

A worthy sequel... A touching love song to the possibilities and limits of friendship. Charming, funny and sly, Porno is a good poke at all kinds of pretence and moral tidiness

Captures and celebrates the hangover of youth

A Decent Ride

How important is a decent ride? 
 
Shortlisted for the 2015 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction

Without question, our most distinguished living exponent of the so- called “excremental vision of life” — a line that goes back (to pick a few names) via James Joyce, Swift, and Ben Jonson, to Chaucer, writers who have explored what meanings of human existence are to be found in the toilet bowl.

Irvine Welsh, I think it’s safe to say, is not a writer who’s mellowing with age... Welsh’s [language is an] astonishingly supple invention: one that can combine scabrousness and lyricism, comedy and ruefulness in the same paragraph... [if] you fancy an authentic and often thrilling blast of full-strength Irvine Welsh, then you’re in for a treat.

It's a stern reader who wouldn't fall for his filthy charm.

Whether your interest is piqued by the ridiculously expensive bottles of whiskey and the extraordinary lengths an American will go to own them or your heart strings are pulled by Wee Jonty’s anguished love story, there’s a multitude of ideas and human emotions that Welsh brings out among the laughter.

When the humour works, we can enjoy the novel for what Welsh clearly intended it to be — a luridly exuberant caper, a series of glossy and gritty snapshots. It won’t make converts out of detractors, but then one senses that a novelist like him wouldn’t want it any other way.

Welsh’s ingenuity, flair, sharp observation, and satirical talent make this not just a decent ride for the reader but an exhilarating one.

It’s filthy and hilarious in equal measure.

An unashamedly indecent read. Welsh fans will love it.

Few can match Welsh's verve for spinning a yarn, for putting you inside the minds of characters that are by turn grotesque, joyful, hilarious and – crucially – utterly compelling.

A Decent Ride, while his most comedic novel, is also his darkest.

More furious, filthy brilliance from Welsh.

Packed with filthy charm and characters old and new, it was a comic triumph with plenty of depth through its exploitation of celebrity culture and the treatment of sex workers.

Welsh carries realism to its limits and sometimes beyond… [He] Creates a world more real than a great many worlds we enter in today’s fiction.

Shortlisted for the 2015 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction 
 
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’? 
 
Can Terry discover the fate of the missing beauty, Jinty Magdalen, and keep her idiot-savant lover, the man-child Wee Jonty, out of prison? 
 
Will he find out the real motives of unscrupulous American businessman and reality-TV star, Ronald Checker? 
 
And, crucially, will Terry be able to negotiate life after a terrible event robs him of his sexual virility, and can a new fascination for the game of golf help him to live without… A DECENT RIDE? 
 
A Decent Ride sees Irvine Welsh back on home turf, leaving us in the capable hands of one of his most compelling and popular characters, ‘Juice’ Terry Lawson, and introducing another bound for cult status, Wee Jonty MacKay: a man with the genitals and brain of a donkey. 
 
In his funniest, filthiest book yet, Irvine Welsh celebrates an un-reconstructed misogynist hustler – a central character who is shameless but also, oddly, decent –and finds new ways of making wild comedy out of fantastically dark material, taking on some of the last taboos. So fasten your seatbelts, because this is one ride that could certainly get a little bumpy…

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins taps into two great obsessions of our time, personal training regimes and real estate – how we look and where we live – and tells a story so subversive and dark it blacks out the Florida sun.

[Welsh] has never written with greater verve... This is a novel packed with energy.

Welsh doesn’t disappoint… Bag yourself a ringside seat.

This is a visceral romp of a novel, a manic endorphin rush of a read that nevertheless also manages to sneak in some serious commentary on the state of American society, putting this book right up there with the best of Irvine Welsh’s work.

Not only cleverly conceived but genuinely, hauntingly, transgressive.

Razor-sharp prose... Both Lucy and Lena dazzle in this hugely entertaining read.

Proof [Welsh] can write convincingly about experiences suitably removed from his own.

A darkly funny novel with well-drawn characters.

Never has filth been such fun – Welsh at his wicked best.

Welsh’s words fizz and burn with energy… It’s crude, hot, vulgar and irreverent, but not in a smut-for-smut’s sake way – this is intellectualized scatology, scatology made into high-art… Welsh’s grist is, and always has been, to show the ugly truth of exactly who we are, with breath-taking beauty. And in that, he remains peerless.

Readers should not let the incessant onslaught of obscenity distract them from…Welsh’s poignant and well-meaning message.

Irvine Welsh maintains a breakneck pace…engaging the reader completely.

From the number one bestselling author of Trainspotting 
 
Meet Lucy Brennan – an aggressive personal trainer who has just become a media hero after taking down a would-be gunman in Miami. 
 
 
The one witness to the daring rescue is Lena Sorensen – an overweight depressive who is becoming increasingly obsessed with Lucy… 
 
 
Irvine Welsh’s latest creation captures the 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.

Skagboys

Both a prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, and an alternative version of it, Skagboys is Irvine Welsh's greatest work.

Masterful… its banter, outrage and razor wit sing off the page

Brilliant and even more thrilling than its predecessor

A brilliantly funny, scary, sweeping novel with all the energy of Welsh’s debut

Funny…visceral and true… Welsh’s finest work to date

Filthy, or fulthy, and hugely funny… Remarkable

Skagboys is a compelling tale...a seriously entertaining piece of work

Welsh performs the mysterious feat of making you think that his characters are real

Trainspotting may be a masterpiece but Skagboys is the reason the artist painted it, and sometimes that’s the most compelling story

It was never going to be light reading, but Welsh’s vigour, wit and energy still make it compulsive

His best work in many years… An essential read

Masterful - crude, violent and poetic by turns... Its banter, outrage and razor wit sing off the page. A film, one suspects, isn't far off

It's brilliant and even more thrilling than its predecessor

A brilliantly funny, scary, sweeping novel with all the energy of Welsh's debut, but imbued with a wider sense of political and social engagement

I'm not sure that in 2012 there will be a single novel, never mind half a dozen, with more verve or nous or life in it than Skagboys. Ye kin pure tell they Booker gadgies'll no huv the baws but...

Trainspotting may be a masterpiece but Skagboys is the reason the artist painted it, and sometimes that's the most compelling story

Skagboys is a compelling tale...a seriously entertaining piece of work

Skagboys, technically, is a prequel to the Leith author's brilliant 1993 debut...the result is a longer, deeper and more affecting work, one which explains and explores the circumstances under which Renton, Sick Boy, Tommy, Spud and Begbie - a roll call as familiar as Disney's Seven Dwarves for readers of a certain age - became the characters they did... It's an undeniably funny book, funny in that three-wit way of being at once visceral and true. Welsh's knack for dialogue - both ineternal and conversational - remains virtuosic and often exhilarating. It makes for characters you can't help but care about even the psychopaths and amoral chancers like Begbie and Sick Boy... Welsh's finest work to date

One of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit and force.

The voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent.

It was never going to be light reading, but Welsh's vigour, wit and energy still make it compulsive

While you can place him in a literary tradition which flows from Alasdair Gray and James Kelman (and maybe Joyce before that), Welsh remains a lapsed punk, hung up on the Velvets and Iggy Pop

Like Trainspotting, Skagboys thrusts along with the exuberance of its episodic stories. Welsh hasn't lost his flair for comic set pieces

Welsh somehow manages to be both the Zola of Therese Raquin, and Dostoevsky's Underground Man, ranging between quasi-scientific perspective and a more immersed, troubling one. That he does so for the most part in a furious low Scots vernacular - filthy, or fulthy, and hugely funny at times - may seem remarkable

If you too loved the colloquial tangle of Trainspotting, you'll find a similar rhythm in Skagboys

Welsh revisits his old demons to give us the Trainspotting prequel...Expect more of the same raw wit and energy.

Quite simply a masterpiece…at least as assured and vibrant in its characterization as Trainspotting, Skagboys is even more on the money politically… this novel more than any other , (including its brilliant predecessor) stands as our spiritual and moral history.

There is enough of what Welsh does well — needle-sharp dialogue, vivid characters and a certainty of place — to make Skagboys his best work in many years…an essential read.

Welsh always spins his yarns with grisly élan.

I ended up charmed beyond measure, if that is the right word for a novel whose odd moments of poignance are regularly booted into touch by death, disillusionment and dereliction.

Every bit as impressive as Trainspotting

Visceral, tragic and comic, with Welsh’s schlock-shock appeal

If you enjoyed Trainspotting, you will adore this prequel... I think that Welsh has achieved the impossible and produced a prequel that betters the main text

Filthy, furious and very funny, this is Welsh back on blistering top form

*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. But there's no room for him in the 1980s and when his family starts to fracture, Mark's life swings out of control. The way out is heroin. 
It's no better for his friends - Spud Murphy is laid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence finds himself sucked into a life of petty crime, violence and the world of the psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all. Exhilarating and moving, Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young addicts in a decade which changed Britain forever. 
 
'Masterful... its banter, outrage and razor wit sing off the page' Independent 
 
'Funny...visceral and true... Welsh's finest work to date' The Times

Porno

'Brilliantly written, inventive, funny, appalling, frightening and every bit as good as Trainspotting' Mail on Sunday

Ten years 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 dream of directing and producing a pornographic movie, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton. In the world of Porno, though, nothing is straightforward, as Sick Boy and Renton find out that they have unresolved issues to address concerning the increasingly unhinged Frank Begbie, the troubled, drug-addled Spud, but, most of all, with each other.

A Fault on the Line / Elspeth’s Boyfriend / Kissing and Making Up (Storycuts)

Three short stories: a man hurries his family home for a football match; Christmas is ruined by a violent clash; and a guy gets in trouble at a strip club.

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.

The State of the Party (Storycuts)

Calum and his friends take acid and go in search of a party.

Calum's evening gets off to nostalgic start when a childhood friend, now a junkie, wanders into the bar. His drinking partner, Crooky, has procured some hits of acid, and the trio head off in search of a party. However, their trip goes badly wrong and the morning brings with it a bleak comedown. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in the collection Reheated Cabbage.

Victor Spoils (Storycuts)

On a post-clubbing Sunday morning, a series of misfortunes aggravate Sarah's hangover.

On a post-clubbing Sunday morning, a series of misfortunes aggravate Sarah's hangover. She must deal with last night's insistent and overly attentive partner, a run-in with an old lover and, most jarringly, the re-emergence of a painfully disabling toothache. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in the collection Reheated Cabbage.

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work... (Storycuts)

A divorced couple fall into a familiar and weary battle.

Mickey Baker, an ex-pat English bar owner living in Spain, returns to England to see his daughter and mother but must face the wrath of his ex-wife, a woman who pulls no punches. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection If You Liked School, You'll Love Work.

The Rosewell Incident (Storycuts)

Cigarette-addicted aliens have Midlothian under surveillance.

Cigarette-addicted aliens have Midlothian under surveillance. A jaded police constable, a pregnant teenager with a UFO obsession and a gang of youths bent on a violent scam are shaken up when a caravan of travellers arrives in Rosewell, and the local mechanic's long-lost brother turns up in some peculiar company. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in the collection Reheated Cabbage.

Kingdom of Fife (Storycuts)

An ex-jockey and table football champion stalks two young riders.

Irvine Welsh

Praise for Can Nothing Save Us?

A new book by Irvine Welsh is always an event . . . No living author is as entertaining to read

So propulsive . . . about as much fun as you can have between two book covers

Can Nothing Save Us? is a big American novel and applies the same sharp-eyed realism that Trainspotting brought to working-class Edinburgh to Trump’s US. Set in the scorching heat of Las Vega ...

A new book by Irvine Welsh is always an event . . . No living author is as entertaining to read

So propulsive . . . about as much fun as you can have between two book covers

Can Nothing Save Us? is a big American novel and applies the same sharp-eyed realism that Trainspotting brought to working-class Edinburgh to Trump’s US. Set in the scorching heat of Las Vega ...

A new book by Irvine Welsh is always an event . . . No living author is as entertaining to read

So propulsive . . . about as much fun as you can have between two book covers

Can Nothing Save Us? is a big American novel and applies the same sharp-eyed realism that Trainspotting brought to working-class Edinburgh to Trump’s US. Set in the scorching heat of Las Vega ...

Books by Irvine Welsh

Series by Irvine Welsh

The CRIME series3 Books

The Trainspotting Novels5 Books

Articles featuring Irvine Welsh

The Penguin Podcast: Latitude special

Extract: Read the opening chapter from Men in Love by Irvine Welsh

The Penguin books that shocked society

Extract: Resolution by Irvine Welsh

‘I don’t fear death’: 21 Questions with Irvine Welsh

Where to start with Irvine Welsh

Books that defined the 1990s

6 of our favourite author cameos in films – did you spot them?

Videos

Irvine Welsh and Miranda Sawyer in conversation at Spiritland

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter