A stunning and provocative debut

A remarkable novel, full of mystery and beauty, it chills you to the bone and then warms your heart

A ravishing and phantasmagorical tale, written with the elegance and quiet menace of snowfall

As dazzling as the snow that fills its pages, Touch marks Zentner out as a talent to watch

Subtly expresses the tension between civilisation and nature embedded deep in the Canadian psyche and the nation's founding myths

[An] eerie, elegiac debut ... The rugged wilderness is captured exquisitely...and despite a narrative rife with tragedy, Zentner's elegant prose keeps the story buoyant.

Such memorable characters, such a strong sense of atmosphere, such grace, and all of these done with a wonderfully light touch...I was moved by the elegiac telling, the unapologetic tenderness that never became maudlin, and the characters...the narrator for whom my heart broke at the end. I will remember this story for a long time.

Touch is full of a sinister magic straight from the tradition of the Brothers Grimm: the dark, impenetrable forest, the ravenous water-witches, the menace of blizzards, the rivers that swallow people whole and leave them frozen in the ice all winter, straining to link hands. Such savagery, however, only illuminates the deeply human love in the marrow of this novel, which Zentner achieves with incredible grace and greatness of heart.

Alexi Zentner has created a seminal poetic story that resonates in our collective memory of timber, minerals and snow; of ghosts and gods and death; but above all, reminds us of the faith and love and optimism necessary for survival.

Touch is one of those rare novels that simultaneously takes hold of both your imagination and your heart and does not let go. In sharp, startling prose, Alexi Zenter seamlessly weaves the story of Sawgamet and its inhabitants, creating a world of myth and magic, hard truths, aching loss, and spectacular triumphs. It's a gem of a book.

A fantastic story set on the margins of the northern forest, Touch explores the mystery that connects the heart of the wild with human passion. This is a tale of extremes, both marvellous and magical...in the midst of brothels, prospectors, lumberjacks, ghosts, obliterating snowstorms and devastating fires, Zentner strings memory in grave rhythmns, making the sound of love. A beautiful first novel.

Calling up both the brutal conditions...and the tough men who wrestled with them, Zentner tells a lyrical tale conveying both the beauty and the danger of the wilderness.

Alexi Zentner's debut novel is poised to be one of those books that gets people talking... The story is slippery and complex, but told with seemingly effortless ease. Touch is indeed a gem of a book.

Zentner excels in evoking the place and details of domestic life

Touch is Zenter's first novel. It is an enchanting phantasmagoria of the imagination as well as a practical tale of the human lust for gold and the human struggle with implacable nature. All in all, a deeply satisfying read

Truly magical

An affecting debut from a major new talent.

In this sweeping family saga, Zentner delves into the heart of myth and memory. Eerie and beautiful, Touch is a love-song to the power - and brevity - of dreams.

Skagboys is a compelling tale...a seriously entertaining piece of work

Skagboys, technically, is a prequel to the Leith author's brilliant 1993 debut...the result is a longer, deeper and more affecting work, one which explains and explores the circumstances under which Renton, Sick Boy, Tommy, Spud and Begbie - a roll call as familiar as Disney's Seven Dwarves for readers of a certain age - became the characters they did... It's an undeniably funny book, funny in that three-wit way of being at once visceral and true. Welsh's knack for dialogue - both ineternal and conversational - remains virtuosic and often exhilarating. It makes for characters you can't help but care about even the psychopaths and amoral chancers like Begbie and Sick Boy... Welsh's finest work to date

One of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit and force.

The voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent.

It was never going to be light reading, but Welsh's vigour, wit and energy still make it compulsive

While you can place him in a literary tradition which flows from Alasdair Gray and James Kelman (and maybe Joyce before that), Welsh remains a lapsed punk, hung up on the Velvets and Iggy Pop

Like Trainspotting, Skagboys thrusts along with the exuberance of its episodic stories. Welsh hasn't lost his flair for comic set pieces

Welsh somehow manages to be both the Zola of Therese Raquin, and Dostoevsky's Underground Man, ranging between quasi-scientific perspective and a more immersed, troubling one. That he does so for the most part in a furious low Scots vernacular - filthy, or fulthy, and hugely funny at times - may seem remarkable

If you too loved the colloquial tangle of Trainspotting, you'll find a similar rhythm in Skagboys

Welsh revisits his old demons to give us the Trainspotting prequel...Expect more of the same raw wit and energy.

Engaging, heartfelt and brutal.

Quite simply a masterpiece…at least as assured and vibrant in its characterization as Trainspotting, Skagboys is even more on the money politically… this novel more than any other , (including its brilliant predecessor) stands as our spiritual and moral history.

There is enough of what Welsh does well — needle-sharp dialogue, vivid characters and a certainty of place — to make Skagboys his best work in many years…an essential read.

Welsh always spins his yarns with grisly élan.

I ended up charmed beyond measure, if that is the right word for a novel whose odd moments of poignance are regularly booted into touch by death, disillusionment and dereliction.

Every bit as impressive as Trainspotting

Visceral, tragic and comic, with Welsh’s schlock-shock appeal

If you enjoyed Trainspotting, you will adore this prequel... I think that Welsh has achieved the impossible and produced a prequel that betters the main text

Filthy, furious and very funny, this is Welsh back on blistering top form