Subscribe to The Writers' Block
Subscribe to The Writers' Block podcast and receive each new episode as soon as it becomes available. You'll never miss out!
Previously on The Writers' Block
Arts Programs
KQED e-Newsletters
Get regular updates on great programs and events
More from KQED
Skagboys
Irvine Welsh, the man behind the best-selling phenomenon Trainspotting, reads a passage from its prequel, Skagboys. (Running Time: 17:21)
Prequel to the best-selling phenomenon Trainspotting, this exhilarating and moving novel shows how Welsh?s colorful miscreants first went wrong.
Marked by Irvine Welsh's scabrous humor and raw Scottish vernacular, Skagboys transports us to 1980s Edinburgh, where the Trainspotting crew is just getting started. Mark Renton has it all: the first in his family to attend university, he has a pretty girlfriend and a great social life. But when economic uncertainties and family problems intervene, Rent succumbs to the defeatism -- not to mention the drug use -- that has taken hold in Edinburgh's tougher quarters. His friends are responding according to personality. Laid off, Spud Murphy is paralyzed in the face of long-term unemployment. Sick Boy, supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, is scamming and hustling for money and drugs. And meanwhile, psycho Franco Begbie is scaring the hell out of everyone. Darkly humorous, Skagboys gives a gritty and gripping portrait of a time, not unlike ours, when money was scarce, unemployment was high, and drugs seemed the answer.
About the Author:
Irvine Welsh: Irvine Welsh is the author of Trainspotting, Filth (being made into a movie starring James McAvoy), Acid House, Glue, Porno, and Crime, writes screenplays, and produces movies. He lives in Chicago, Miami, and London.
