Welsh, Irvine
Welsh, Irvine ( 1957 – ),Scottish writer, born in Edinburgh, generally seen as the first and most important member of the so-called ‘Chemical Generation’ of younger British writers, politically disaffected, culturally sophisticated, and centrally engaged with the music, drugs, and mores of 1990s club culture. Welsh grew up in Muirhouse, one of Edinburgh's peripheral housing estates. After leaving school at 16, he did many jobs in Edinburgh and London, among them TV repair work, property development, and working for local government for the City of Edinburgh District Council. He took an MBA at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, in 1990 . His first novel, Trainspotting ( 1993 ), about a group of young heroin addicts in 1980s Edinburgh, was sexually and scatologically explicit, written in a pungent Edinburgh vernacular, and distinguished by great comic verve. It quickly became a best-seller and cultural...
[The entire page is 285 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
