Filth - Softcover

Welsh, Irvine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224041185 ISBN 13: 9780224041188

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 1998

Synopsis

With the festive season almost upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is winding down at work and gearing up socially-kicking off Christmas with a week os sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are irritating flies in the ointment though, including a missing wife (and the resulting domestic squalor), a nagging cocaine habit a dramatic deterioration in his genital health, and a string if increasingly demanding extra-marital affairs. The last thing he needs, on top of all these, is a messy murder to solve. Still, it will mean plenty of over-time, a chance to stitch up colleagues and finally clinch the promo-tion he craves. But as this single-minded career cop spirals through the lower reaches of degredation and evil, he encounters opposition-in the form of truth and ethical conscience-from the most unexpected quarter of all: his anus. With such an adversary you can run, but you just can`t hide. Things are beginning to go badly for D. S but in an Irvine Welsh book nothing is ever so bad that it can`t gat worse. . . In Bruce Robertson, Welsh has created on eof the most corrupt, misanth-ropic characters in contemporary fiction, and has written a dark, disturbing and very funny novel about sleaze, power and the abuse of everything. At last a novel that lives up to its name.

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: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0224041185
• ISBN 13: 9780224041188
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416