“I think a lot of people want me to be like the characters in the books: they want that kind of congruence.”

Scottish novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and filmmaker

Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and filmmaker. His work is closely tied to Scotland, where many of his novels and stories are set, and he is known for writing about working-class life. His fiction is marked by blunt, often unsparing portraits of addiction, alienation, limited opportunity and boredom. Those themes recur across his novels and short stories, which focus on the pressures and details of everyday life in working-class Scotland.