Irvine Welsh's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Irvine Welsh recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Irvine Welsh's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

Crime and Punishment: A Russian Realistic Novel

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4.3

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the

Recommended by Ben Domenech, Esther Perel, Irvine Welsh, and 3 others.

Irvine Welsh

It is not a crime book in the way that we understand crime fiction today. Instead it is like an existential psychological thriller. [source]

Ben Domenech

@SohrabAhmari @li88yinc @jgcrum @BlueBoxDave @InezFeltscher @JarrettStepman Maybe the best book ever written. [source]

Esther Perel

You can reread the Russians. They are timeless. [source]

Gone, Baby, Gone

Dennis Lehane

4.2

“Powerful and raw, harrowing, and unsentimental.”

—Washington Post Book World

“Chilling, completely credible….[An] absolutely gripping story.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Mr. Lehane delivers big time.”
—Wall Street Journal

In Gone, Baby, Gone, the master of the new noir, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island), vividly captures the complex beauty and darkness of working-cla

Recommended by Irvine Welsh and Simon Kernick.

Irvine Welsh

He is one of the few classic thriller writers who really writes about contemporary social issues. The quality of the writing is absolutely superb and it moves you along. [source]

Simon Kernick

I love this book; this really is a thriller, and a beautifully written one. For me, Dennis Lehane is one of the best American thriller writers alive today. This is one of his early books from his Kenzie and Gennaro series – a male and female partnership of private investigators based in Boston. He wrote five books featuring them in the 1990s. [source]

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The Cutting Room

Louise Welsh

3.6

When Rilke, a dissolute and promiscuous auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them.

What follows is a compulsive journey of discovery, decadence, and deviousness that leads Rilke into a dark underworld of transvestite clubs, seedy bars, and porn shops. In this hidden city haunt

Recommended by Irvine Welsh.

Irvine Welsh

She is a bit like Dostoyevsky in the way that she uses the existential thriller and the crime genre as a way of exploring individuals’ relationships with society. [source]

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The Glister

John Burnside

3.2

Acclaimed author John Burnside delivers a profound, page-turning novel about innocence, evil, morality, and the dark corners of the human psyche.

Mysterious illnesses affect the inhabitants of the post-industrial village of Innertown, and a pervasive sense of malaise hangs everywhere. So when teenage boys disappear into the poisoned woods surrounding the village’s abandoned chemical plant, no one

Recommended by Irvine Welsh.

Irvine Welsh

I did a review of this for The Guardian and it is a bit of a misnomer to call it a crime book. The thing that I like about this book is that there is this chemical plant that has poisoned everyone, which becomes a bit of a character in the book. John Burnside is a fantastic writer and a great poet as well and you can see the poetic influence in the writing. It really draws you in and you actually feel like you are in the plant. It is just very, very spooky. [source]

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Loss (Gus Dury, #3)

Tony Black

4.3

Gus Dury is a changed man. He is off the Edinburgh streets & back with estranged wife, Debs. He has promised her that he won't get involved in any more dodgy cases. Above all, he's off the drink. Then his brother, Michael, is found dead with a bullet in his heart and Gus' life begins to unravel all over again.

Recommended by Irvine Welsh.

Irvine Welsh

I have chosen this book because, coming from Edinburgh, I see Tony Black as a guy who really writes well about a working-class Edinburgh punter with his main character Gus Dury. And this is a character I recognise. Most of the fiction books about Edinburgh are geared for the tourist but this is actually geared for the punter – the kind of young guy on the dole, sitting in Robbie’s in the afternoon with a pint of lager and a dog-eared copy of a book, which is probably one of Tony Black’s books. It really evokes the place. [source]