Cover

About the Book

‘I’m coming up in a big way as that invisible hand grabs a hud ay me and sticks me onto the roof because the music is in me around me and everywhere’

Irvine Welsh, ‘poet laureate of the chemical generation’, exposes the seamy underbelly of rave’s utopian dream. Lloyd, our permanently pilled-up protagonist, pushes his weekends to breaking point and beyond in this frazzled trip through Scottish clubland. He experiences the vertiginous uppers and downers of the Second Summer of Love, dabbles in a spot of disc jockeying and closes in, gradually, on some kind of redemption…

This ebook contains selections from the novel Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh.

About the Author

IRVINE WELSH was born in the great city of Edinburgh and matured in the housing schemes of Leith, West Pilton and Muirhouse. Neither school nor conventional employment appealed, but he was inspired to write after experiencing the explosions of punk and rave first-hand.

Trainspotting, Welsh’s debut novel, was rejected from the Man Booker Prize shortlist, allegedly for offending the judges. It went on to sell over a million copies in the UK alone and was adapted into an iconic film by Danny Boyle, starring Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Kelly Macdonald. Porno was adapted into T2: Trainspotting, a sequel that reunited the original cast and crew.

Now the author of twelve novels, most recently Dead Men’s Trousers, and four books of shorter fiction, Welsh enjoys a dedicated global readership and tweets prolifically, mainly about tennis and corrupt politicians. He serves as the official ambassador of the Homeless World Cup and currently lives in Miami.

Recommended Books by Irvine Welsh

Trainspotting

Skagboys

Dead Men’s Trousers

Prologue

AH AM FUCKIN well fed up because there’s nothing happening and ah’ve probably done a paracetamol but fuck it you need to have positive vibes and wee Amber, she’s rubbing away at the back ay ma neck saying it’ll happen when this operatic slab of synth seems to be 3D and ah realise that I’m coming up in a big way as that invisible hand grabs a hud ay me and sticks me onto the roof because the music is in me around me and everywhere, it’s just leaking from my body, this is the game this is the game and ah look around and we’re all going phoah and our eyes are just big black pools of love and energy and my guts are doing a big turn as the quease zooms through my body and we’re up to the floor one by one and ah think I’m going tae need tae shit but ah hold on and it passes and I’m riding this rocket to Russia …

– No bad gear, eh, ah say tae Amber, as we dance ourselves slowly into it.

– Aye, sound.

– Awright, eh, says Ally.