ISBN-13: 978-1849210720
Published by Kennedy & Boyd, 2012
This new edition of the critically-acclaimed biography of Alexander Trocchi has been revised, extended and updated since its first publication in 1991 when it helped to create new interest in the celebrated – and notorious – author of Young Adam and Cain’s Book. It was highly influential, led to the reprinting of his novels and inspired a wave of new writers to discover Trocchi for themselves. A story of heartbreak and pain, the minutiae of squalor, tragedy, obsession, of chemical addictions, sexual experimentations, promiscuity and desertion, suicide – and literary genius. So begins this account of one of Britain’s most remarkable literary figures. It traces his childhood in war-time Glasgow, his literary apprenticeship in Paris with Beckett, Ionesco and Sartre, his move to New York then Venice Beach among the leaders of the Beat movement. Trocchi charmed and haunted all who met him. … a strange and saddening book… Trocchi… experimenting with drugs and sex…left behind a trail of wrecked lives … at least he has been lucky in this excellent biography which conveys something of his charm and charisma.” COLIN WILSON, Literary Review
 | Andrew ScottAndrew Murray Scott is a fiction writer based in Broughty Ferry on the sunny east coast of Scotland. His first novel, Tumulus, won the inaugural Dundee International Book Prize in 2000 and received warm reviews of the “vibrant new voice in Scottish fiction” variety and was described as “a tour-de-force”. Andrew has published five novels to date: Estuary Blue (2001) from the same publisher, Polygon, The Mushroom Club (2007), The Big J (2008) and In A Dead Man’s Jacket, Andrew’s first e-novel, which is available for both Kindle and Kobo e-readers. Previously a journalist and now a media professional, Andrew has also written a number of non-fiction book titles including biographies of counter-culture icon Alexander Trocchi, The Making of the Monster (1991, reprinted in 2012) and John Graham of Claverhouse, Bonnie Dundee (1989, reprinted 2000) the charismatic leader of the first Jacobite rebellion in 1689, whose letters Andrew also collected and edited for the Scottish History Society. Andrew also edited a collection of Trocchi’s unpublished writings, Invisible Insurrection: A Trocchi Reader, reprinted in 1996. He has written non-fiction books on the life and times of the city of Dundee including a popular and much-reprinted concise historical guide, Discovering Dundee, a post-war social history, Modern Dundee, a two-volume cultural history of the city, titled Dundee’s Literary Lives, as well as a quirky volume of 50 evocative 20th century photographs, The Wee Book of Dundee. |
