Young Adam: A Novel

Alexander Trocchi was one of the seminal figures of the literary underground in the 1950s and ’60s. Born in Scotland, Trocchi made his way in Paris and New York, and Young Adam is his magnum opus. Young Adam tells the story of Joe, a drifter who works on a barge traveling the Clyde River between Glasgow and Edinburgh. As the novel opens, Joe finds the corpse of a young woman floating in the water. Was it an accident, a suicide, or murder? As the police investigate and arrest a suspect, it becomes clear that Joe knows far more than he’s telling. Originally published in 1954, Young Adam was made into a film starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton. Newly reissued with an introduction by renowned literary critic David L. Ulin, this is an absorbing portrait of a haunted man, a forgotten gem by an important, iconoclastic writer.