Filth - Softcover

Welsh, Irvine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393318680 ISBN 13: 9780393318685

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998

Synopsis

With Christmas season in the offing, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially -- looking forward to his annual week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime -- and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding, and conscience nagging, parasite living in his gut. Yes, things are going badly, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse.

About this title

Review:

Irvine Welsh has produced more than his share of revolting characters in his short yet spectacular writing career, but in the creation of Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson he has surpassed himself. The protagonist of Filth is, both personally and professionally, utterly corrupt; a thief, drug user, misogynist and racist, with standards of appearance and personal hygiene that are simply beyond belief. It goes without saying that his wife and children have left him but, oddly, he still has few drinking mates, and even some of the women he so hideously abuses are still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. "The undeniable sexuality which is part and parcel of the complete dominance over another human being", opines the viciously selfish Robertson, is just part of what makes, "poliswork such a satisfying career." But, strangely, as we chart his inevitable decline...from what is admittedly a very low baseline--a solid, almost conventional, underlying morality begins to assert itself. Amid the degradation we come across a hint of reason as Welsh's stunningly direct dialogue and hideously imaginative plot combine in a thrilling, undeniably unsettling novel. --Nick Wroe

Review:

"Welsh firing on all cylinders... The best thing he has done since Trainspotting" (Sunday Times)

"It is surely a remarkable cultural moment when a reviewer is offered cash in a bar for an advance copy of a literary novel... Filth is a masterpiece...squarely in the classic line of classic scottish writing" (Independent)

"Things are going well for Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson. Promotion is in the offing, he's got all the booze and drugs he needs, and his various plots aimed at friends and colleagues seem to be working out. Robertson, compulsive and repulsive by turns, has only two problems. One is a case of racially-motivated murder on his patch. The other is that there's a nasty tapeworm in his gut and it seems intent on having its say... A brutally sustained achievement" (Evening Standard)

"We're used to tough cops with non-PC attitudes, but Welsh trumps the lot with his evil-scheming, ball-scratching, foul-mouthed hero-with-haemorrhoids... Welsh's jet-black comedy at once entertains and appals... Gloriously grotesque" (Esquire)

"A snarling epic of a book...ugly, devastatingly funny, unremittingly nasty and pulls no punches... Don't dare miss it" (Scotsman)

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0393318680
• ISBN 13: 9780393318685
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416