The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh

The subcultural enfant terrible of devolutionary protest and rebellion, Irvine Welsh is now widely acknowledged as the founding father of a whole new tradition in post-devolution Scottish writing. The unprecedented worldwide success of Trainspotting, magnified by Danny Boyle’s iconic film adaptation, revolutionised Scottish culture and radically remoulded the country’s self-image from dreamy romantic hinterland to agitated metropolitan hotbed. Although Welsh’s career is very much an ongoing phenomenon, his influence on contemporary Scottish literary history is already indisputable and enduring. The Companion provides a thorough, up-to-date and critical evaluation of Welsh’s work. New innovative readings address questions of class, subculture and drug use, nationhood, gender and narrative experimentation with reference to broader developments - such as devolution and globalisation - within contemporary Scottish, British and world culture. Features: * Covers all of Welsh’s fiction, his dramatic work for the stage and for television, plus a detailed analysis of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting * Traces the author’s critical and popular reception at home, abroad and overseas, and analyses the popular ‘cult’ and media hype surrounding his work * Examines Welsh’s relations to other writers, both Scottish and non-Scottish, and his contentious position within the Scottish literary canon * Aims throughout to amalgamate a critical assessment of the work, the writer and the ‘phenomenon