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 fourteen further novels, including the number one Sunday Times bestseller Dead Men’s Trousers, four books of shorter fiction and numerous plays and screenplays. Irvine Welsh currently lives between London, Edinburgh and Miami.

Irvine Welsh

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Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
A short story from Reheated Cabbage. 
 
Two guys fighting over a beautiful girl might agree - on reflection, and after a few pills and many pints of lager - that their friendship is actually more important than a woman. 
 
Hilarious, shocking and hugely entertaining, Victor Spoils has all the classic Irvine Welsh ingredients 
 
© Irvine Welsh 2010 (P) Penguin Audio 2010

Victor Spoils

A Short Story from Reheated Cabbage

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

Rave

Vintage Minis

From Irvine Welsh’s bestselling books come four brilliant plays: Trainspotting, Filth and Marabou Stork Nightmares (all adapted by Harry Gibson) and Ecstasy (adapted by Keith Wyatt). Gathered together for the first time in one volume these adaptations of Irvine Welsh’s bestselling novels and novellas form a remarkable body of playwriting.Gritty dialogue, scenes of outstanding originality and dazzling comic energy characterise and distinguish these wonderful works.

4 Play

Trainspotting, Ecstasy, Filth and Marabou Stork Nightmares

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…

A Decent Ride

Hilarious, shocking and hugely entertaining, Reheated Cabbage has all the classic Irvine Welsh ingredients 
 
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. 
 
'The stories combine sly humour with the tang of lived experience. It makes for a terrific collection, showcasing a writer who...has blossomed into one of the most distinctive, and distinguished, observers of British life' Sunday Telegraph

Reheated Cabbage

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.

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

It is the late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin – a time for hope, for love, for raving. 
 
Leaving heroin behind and 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 starts an intense relationship with Amanda, his ‘princess’ – rich, connected, everything that he is not. When the pair set a date for their wedding, Sick Boy 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? 
 
Irvine Welsh’s sequel to his iconic bestseller Trainspotting tells a story of riotous adventures, wild new passions, and young men determined to get the most out of life.

Men in Love

**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

Dead Men's Trousers

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

Trainspotting

A special edition of the cult classic

'Welsh is brilliant at what he does... This is his most readable and memorable novel since Trainspotting' Independent on Sunday 
 
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 70s 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. 
 
'His most ambitious, but also his most complete and engaging work to date... arguably, his best book' TLS

Glue

*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

Skagboys

Discover five short stories from the bestselling author of Trainspotting. 
 
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. 
 
'Vigorous, stunningly funny...whimsical, warm, surreal, grotesque and brilliant' Guardian 
 
'A rambunctious return to the glory days of Trainspotting... Dazzlingly diverse... Sick and vigorous, written with Welsh's inimitable in-yer-face energy' Sunday Telegraph

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

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?

Resolution

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

The Long Knives

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.

Porno

Suitable only for persons of strong constitution. 
 
Contains: 
Drug use 
Perversion 
Murder 
Corruption 
Sexism 
Racism 
Law Enforcement 
 
And a tapeworm

Filth

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?

Crime

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.

The Blade Artist

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.

The Acid House

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.

Marabou Stork Nightmares

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.

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

Rebecca Navarro, best-selling authoress of Regency romances, suffers a paralysing stroke. Assisted by her nurse, Rebecca plans her revenge on her unfaithful husband. But will Freddy Royle, hospital trustee, celebrity and necrophiliac, thwart those plans? Dave Thornton, soccer thug, has lost his heart to flawed beauty Samantha Worthington. Together they go in search of the man who marketed the drug that crippled her - in order to cripple him. 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 in the grim backstreets of Edinburgh, or will it ignite and blaze like a thousand suns?

Ecstasy

Three Tales of Chemical Romance

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

T2 Trainspotting

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.

The State of the Party (Storycuts)

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.

Victor Spoils (Storycuts)

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.

The Rosewell Incident (Storycuts)

Three young women - competitive, bitchy and moneyed - have lunch together at their favourite Korean restaurant every Friday. When the friendly chef from the restaurant moves into the same building as one of the girls, she strikes up a friendship with him. But the disappearance of her dog sparks suspicion of the Korean chef's motives, and his culinary ambitions. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection If You Liked School, You'll Love Work.

The DOGS of Lincoln Park (Storycuts)

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

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.

I Am Miami (Storycuts)

Raymond Wilson Butler, a director and writer down on his luck, is struggling to write a biography of his hero, the late filmmaker Halliday. He conducts a series of interviews with his widow Yolanda, an overweight woman living alone in the desert in Arizona with a penchant for taxidermy. Raymond knows she is an eccentric but nothing can prepare him for Yolanda's revelation of the true story of the life and death of her late husband. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection If You Liked School, You'll Love Work.

Miss Arizona (Storycuts)

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Rhianna Dhillon in conversation with Irvine Welsh on The Penguin Podcast

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