New Welsh Short Story - IrvineWelsh.com

The Scotsman: Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith are joining forces for the first time to write a book of interlinking stories about Edinburgh in a project which is setting the literary world alight.

The book, One City, which will raise money for a charity fighting social exclusion in the city, is already being talked about as the Scottish publishing event of the year. And next week, The Scotsman, which is sponsoring the project in association with Ottakar’s bookstores, will reveal details of a competition for a fourth story that will also be included in the book.

The book will be launched at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre on 9 December, when all three best-selling authors will share a stage. The fact that the writers have such radically different takes on Edinburgh life – a social mix that ranges from Welsh’s Leith junkies to McCall Smith’s Merchiston haut bourgeoisie – should make it a natural choice for book groups and library events.

The aim is to get as many people as possible in the city reading one book at the same time – in a similar way to early next year with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, as announced exclusively in The Scotsman on Monday.

So far, the only one of the three to have finished a story is Irvine Welsh. “Mine is about small-time gangsters, Murrayfield housewives, escaped tigers and stoner postmen – the usual, basically,” he said yesterday.