Leith-born Irvine Welsh is one of Scotland’s most popular authors, having short to fame with his debut novel Trainspotting in 1993.
He’s about to publish his 14th novel, Resolution, and has also written, or co-written, a further six books of short stories, 10 screeplays and three stage plays.
Many of his books have been turned into films, including two Trainspotting movies, Filth, The Acid House and Ecstasy.
And when he’s not writing he’s also dabbled in directing and is an in-demand DJ.
For those who are wondering where to start when it comes to Welsh’s bibliography, thousands of readers at book website Goodreads have been busy reviewing everything he’s ever written.
Here are their 10 most highly-rated books.
Many of his books have been turned into films, including two Trainspotting movies, Filth, The Acid House and Ecstasy.
5. A Decent Ride
With an average rating of 3.90 from 3,268 reviews, A Decent Ride completes Irvine Welsh's five top rated books. Published in 1995, it features Terry Lawson as its main character, the Edinburgh taxi driver introduced in Glue. "Has ‘Juice’ Terry Lawson finally met his match in Hurricane ‘Bawbag’? Can Terry discover the fate of the missing beauty, Jinty Magdalen, and keep her idiot-savant lover, the man-child Wee Jonty, out of prison? Will he find out the real motives of unscrupulous American businessman and reality-TV star Ronald Checker?And, crucially, will Terry be able to negotiate life after a terrible event robs him of his sexual virility, and can a new fascination for the game of golf help him to live without...a decent ride?" | Contributed
6. Glue
Wesh's 2001 novel Glue has an average rating of 3.89 from 14,367 and features several characters he would later return to in future books. "Glue is the story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh schemes, and about the loyalties, the experiences and the secrets that hold them together into their thirties. As we follow their lives from the 70s into the new century - from punk to techno, from speed to Es - we can see each of them trying to struggle out from under the weight of the conditioning of class and culture, peer pressure and their parents' hopes that maybe their sons will do better than they did. What binds the four of them is the friendship formed by the scheme, their school, and their ambition to escape from both; their loyalty fused in street morality: back up your mates, don't hit women and, most importantly, never grass - on anyone." | Contributed
7. Porno
Porno, published in 2002, was Welsh's first sequel to Trainspotting and has an average rating of 3.83 from 25,141 reviews."Ten years on from Trainspotting Sick Boy is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London. Having failed spectacularly as a hustler, pimp, husband, father and businessman, Sick Boy taps into an opportunity which to him represents one last throw of the dice. However, to realise his dream of directing and producing a pornographic movie, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton. In the world of Porno, though, nothing is straightforward, as Sick Boy and Renton find out that they have unresolved issues to address concerning the increasingly unhinged Frank Begbie, the troubled, drug-addled Spud, but, most of all, with each other." | Contributed
8. The Blade Artist
Rated an average of 3.82 from 7,255 reviews, the Blade Artist was published in 2016 and follows the notorious Begbie character from Trainspotting. "Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly." | Contributed