Irvine Welsh Libros

Este es el estremecedor relato de un grupo de jóvenes tan desespe­radamente realistas que no osan siquiera pensar en el futuro: saben que nada o casi nada va a cambiar y se dedican a vivir en un mundo de drogas, violencia, sexo y alcohol. Son los habitantes del lado más oscuro del Edimburgo de los ochenta, capital europea del sida y paraíso del desempleo, la miseria y la prostitución. Entre pico y pico, entre borrachera y partido de fútbol, Rents, Renton, Mark y Spud nos relatan sus experiencias y nos ofrecen sus reflexiones, todas ellas regidas por ese «elixir que da y quita la vida». Cuidado, porque, siguiendo el ritmo vigoroso y el áspero lenguaje de las calles que Welsh despliega admirablemente, es posible que nos sintamos atraídos por sus locuras y, a la vez, por sus agotadores y aburridos días. Catalogada por muchos como novela de culto, la obra constituye sin duda una lectura obligada. Una experiencia literaria que deja sin aliento. Miguel Iglesias Letras a la Taza Ilustración Marta Cerdà

El inspector Ray Lennox ha resuelto el caso de asesinato de una niña de siete años. Ha sido recompensado con unas vacaciones para superar su obsesiva implicación en el caso y su depresión posterior. Lennox viaja con su novia a Miami, y se olvida de la cocaína y el alcohol. Pero, después de una discusión, va a un bar, donde se le acercan dos mujeres con cocaína y ganas de fiesta. Los tres acaban en el piso de una de ellas, intentando no despertar a Tianna, la hija que duerme en su habitación. A la mañana siguiente, tras una brutal pelea y la desaparición de la madre, Lennox se encontrará a cargo de Tianna, una precoz lolita de diez años, amenazada por una red de pedófilos, y deberá enfrentarse a los fantasmas del pasado.

With three wickedly funny and harrowing tales of love and its ups and downs, the ever-surprising Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, virtually re-invents a new genre of fiction: the chemical romance. In Lorraine goes to Livingston, a best-selling author of Regency romances, paralysed and bedridden, plans her revenge on a 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 him 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 out to a house music beat.

Oliver, an orphan in London's perilous streets, struggles against poverty and joins a relentless criminal gang. Dickens vividly depicts the city's underworld, highlighting the plight of thieves and homeless children while giving a voice to the disadvantaged and abused.

Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his family starts to fracture, Mark's life swings out of control and he succumbs to the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas. The way out is heroin. It's no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence - the worlds of the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all. Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred - but a lot of laughs, and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.

These two blackly humorous screenplays are both set in Edinburgh. "Trainspotting" is based on Irvine Welch's novel about heroin addicts and the underbelly of Edinburgh life. In "Shallow Grave" three young people discover a dead body and a suitcase full of money in their flat.

*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.

DS Bruce Robertson is planning on kicking his festive season off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam, but it starts off quite badly, with a missing wife, a cocaine habit, a deterioration in his genital health, and a messy murder to solve. By the author of TRAINSPOTTING.