The Young Team: Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023

by Graeme Armstrong

Overview

The Times top ten bestseller
Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023
Scots Book o the Year 2021
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award&Betty Trask Award 2021

‘Trainspotting for a new generation’ – Independent
‘An instant Scottish classic’ – The Skinny

2005. Glasgow is named Europe’s Murder Capital, driven by a violent territorial gang and knife culture. In the housing schemes of adjacent Lanarkshire, Scotland’s former industrial heartland, wee boys become postcode warriors.

2004. Azzy Williams joins the Young Team [YTP]. A brutal gang conflict with their deadly rivals, the Young Toi [YTB] begins.

2012. Azzy dreams of another life. He faces his toughest fight of all – the fight for a different future.

Expect Buckfast. Expect bravado. Expect street philosophy. Expect rave culture. Expect anxiety. Expect addiction. Expect a serious facial injury every six hours. Expect murder.

Hope for a way out.

Inspired by the experiences of its author, Graeme Armstrong, The Young Team is an energetic novel, full of the loyalty, laughs, mischief, boredom, violence and threat of life on these streets. It looks beyond the tabloid stereotypes to tell a powerful story about the realities of life for young people in Britain today.

‘A swaggering, incendiary debut’ – Guardian
‘Dialect that fizzes off the page’ – Observer
‘One of the most admired young voices in British fiction’ – The Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529017342
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan
Publication date:	03/05/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	834 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Graeme Armstrong is a Scottish writer from Airdrie. His teenage years were spent within North Lanarkshire’s gang culture. Alongside overcoming his own struggles with drug addiction, alcohol abuse and violence, he read English as an undergraduate at the University of Stirling; where he returned to study a Masters’ in Creative Writing. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Strathclyde. His bestselling debut novel, The Young Team, is inspired by his experiences, and Picador published in March 2020. It won a Betty Trask Award, a Somerset Maugham Award, and Scots Book o the Year 2021. In 2021, Graeme presented 'Scotland the Rave', a documentary screened by the BBC that explored Scotland’s rave and PCDJ culture, which was subsequently nominated for a BAFTA Scotland and RTS Scotland Award 2022. Most recently, Graeme was named as one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists 5’.

Graeme Armstrong is a Scottish writer from Airdrie. His teenage years were spent within North Lanarkshire’s gang culture. He was inspired to study English Literature following his reading of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting at just sixteen. Alongside overcoming his own struggles with drug addiction, alcohol abuse and violence, he defied expectation to read English as an undergraduate at the University of Stirling; where, after graduating with honours, he returned to study a Masters’ in Creative Writing.

His debut novel, The Young Team is inspired by his experiences.

Editorial Reviews

"Raw and lyrical . . . written in a voice that recalls Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner – dialect that fizzes off the page."  Observer


'Vivid, dynamic and sharp as a whip." —Janice Galloway, author of The Trick is to Keep Breathing


"Updated Trainspotting for a new generation." —The Guardian's Best Fiction List 2020 on The Young Team

From the Publisher