Irvine Welsh was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Raised in the tenement homes of Leith, the prefabs in West Pilton and the maisonettes in Muirhouse. At sixteen, he left school, took various jobs, and eventually moved to London in the seventies. There he spent his free time exploring the London punk scene, then moved back to Edinburgh to renew his studies. Back home, and inspired by the nineties rave scene, he ran into some fascinating characters he immortalised later, in the pages of Trainspotting. At first dismissed for its unmarketable content, Trainspotting shot Welsh to fame, precipitated further by the release of the film, by Danny Boyle, three years later. Since then he has written eight other works of fiction. He currently lives in the US.
Alan Black is a writer and served as the former literary manager of San Francisco’s famous bookish venue Edinburgh Castle Pub. His work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com, and The Christian Science Monitor. He is cofounder of the Scottish Cultural and Arts Foundation and coeditor of Public House, an anthology. He has also authored the book Kick the Balls: A Bruising Season in the Life of a Suburban Soccer Coach (Plume/Penguin) and co-authored the book The Glorious World Cup (with David Henry Sterry – NAL/Penguin)
Praise for Irvine Welsh & Dead Men’s Trousers …
“Raunchy, profane, violent, and frequently hilarious… Dead Men’s Trousers delivers a strangely life-affirming dose of dark absurdity, ensuring that, if this is the last we see of these characters, they won’t soon be forgotten.” – *STARRED* Booklist
“Unfolds like a Keystone Kops version of Ocean’s 11… Welsh’s entire oeuvre crackles with idiomatic energy and brio, and this rollicking novel is no different.” —Publishers Weekly
“Welsh’s peculiar talent is finding the comedy in sex, addiction, betrayal, and death, and he handles the job so deftly that the novel nearly qualifies as comfort reading even in gross-out mode.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Blisteringly funny…” —New York Times Book Review
“It is funny, unflinchingly abrasive, authentic, and inventive, unerringly on-and off-the pulse. It is a true cult, the kind of novel you press on perfect strangers. It validates a world fiction hasn’t recognized before.” —Time Out
“Irvine Welsh writes with skill, wit, and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing in decades.” —Nick Hornby, Sunday Times
“Irvine Welsh writes with style, imagination, wit, and force, and in a voice which those alienated by much current fiction clearly want to hear.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“Irvine Welsh is the real thing-a marvelous admixture of nihilism and heartbreak, pinpoint realism (especially in dialect and tone) and almost archetypal universality. —David Foster Wallace
