Author: Irvine Welsh

Filth is, by far, my favorite Irvine Welsh’s novel. It is hilarious, depressive, revolting and disgusting, but a page-turner all the same.

Detective-Sargeant Bruce Robertson is a corrupt and sociopath “polis”, cocaine addicted, who hates everyone and plays these foul games of his with people (especially his workmates) to see them disgraced and out of his way – “how does it make you feel?” is a common question is his mind.

He is designated to investigate and solve the murder of a young black guy, which, by the way, happens in the prologue but doesn’t develop too much along the book, as the main plot is about Bruce and his sick behavior.

At one point a tapeworm is introduced in the context, overlapping the text in the form of a tube (or guts, whatever you prefer), and first he just wants to eat, but then develops a personality – calling himself “The Self” and Bruce “The Host” – and then tells us the real/inner story of his host’s life – those things Bruce won’t admit even to himself.

The book is told in first person – there’s also a second character with a few chapters of her own: Carole, Bruce’s ex-wife – and the title is just perfect. Bruce is disgusting – when he goes to the toilet to scratch this arse and then he goes back to the canteen to eat something without washing his hands – aaaahhhhh – I wish I hadn’t read that!

Some characters from other books are mentioned in this novel, a couple of them having an important part on the story (Lexo and Ghostie from Marabou Stork Nightmares, and Ray Lennox from Crime, for instance), and there’s again sex, drugs and alcohol abuse, racism and hatred.

The end is very surprising and I highly recommend this book, but certainly not for the soft, pure and innocent ones.

Buy Filth from: The Book Depository or Amazon.