"SYRINGE, NEEDLE, SPOON, CANDLE, LIGHTER, PACKET AY POWDER": FIRST EDITION OF TRAINSPOTTING, SCARCE HARDCOVER ISSUE

WELSH, Irvine. Trainspotting. London: Secker & Warburg, (1993). Octavo, original red cloth boards, original dust jacket. $22,500.

First edition of Welsh's gritty debut novel, the basis for the 1996 award-winning British film, in the scarce hardcover issue.

"Blisteringly funny…. Don't abandon everything for the movie. It's worth making the effort with Trainspotting, not merely because relatively few writers have rummaged through this particular enclave of British youth culture, but because even fewer have dug there so deeply" (New York Times). "It is funny, unflinchingly abrasive, authentic, and inventive, unerringly on—and off—the pulse. It is a true cult, the kind of novel you press on perfect strangers. It validates a world fiction hasn't recognized before" (Time Out). "Irvine Welsh is the real thing—a marvelous admixture of nihilism and heartbreak, pinpoint realism (especially in dialect and tone) and almost archetypal universality" (David Foster Wallace). Almost always seen in the paperback issue of the same year; only somewhere between 100 and 600 copies are said to have been issued in hardcover, most of which seem to have been intended for library use. The dust jacket design mimics the covers of the paperback issue, including the "Secker & Warburg Paperbacks" logo.

A fine copy.