The Young Team: Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023

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Armstrong admits to being concerned with representing gangs, especially gang violence, but he hopes that The Young Team will encourage conversations about how masculinity, mental health and substance abuse intersect with one another. “I’m sure some people will say I glamourise gang violence and sure, the violence adds drama and pace to the book, but I don’t think the violence is particularly fetishised,” he says. “The novel is about the internal life of Azzy and the alienation of drug addiction and the loneliness of poor mental health amidst a gang conflict. There are lots of young men in the west of Scotland who are wounded by trauma and can’t talk about their feelings. They go on to become violent men, to offend, commit suicide and self-medicate through drugs and alcohol. We see that legacy in the book.” I had no idea about the anti-social behaviour aspect. It was quite a revelation. You start seeing gang insignia everywhere, it was this presence – and once you knew about it you wanted in.” The Young Team is a 21st century tale of alcohol, drugs, raving, territorial disputes and violence. It focusses on young working class males on Lanarkshire estates who are compelled to live up to the hard man image of their elders. Predictably for most it’s a road to nowhere, littered with burnouts, corpses, casualties, regret, anger and sorrow. Would you agree that there’s a certain nostalgia for your time in gangs that comes through in the book?

Armstrong will work closely with producers as a consultant on the project. Read More Related Articles The novel follows the life of Azzy Williams from 14 to 21 as he forays into the murky world of gangs, drugs and knife crime in the former industrial heartlands of North Lanarkshire – a story heavily informed by Graeme’s own experiences.. In April 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their 'Best of Young British Novelists' list, [5] [6] an honour presented every ten years to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty. [7] Biography [ edit ] Armstrong (right) as a young gang member in Airdrie, 2006 Azzy Williams. He cares. Deep down, he does. The hash numbs you. Daily smoking does that to you. Azzy Williams gets into fights. He gets hurt, his friends get hurt, and the passage of time leads to what was once a comforting drinking spot with your pals, the cemetery, to being the only place you’ll ever see them again. How did you get here? Azzy Williams joins the Young Team [YTP]. A brutal gang conflict with their deadly rivals, the Young Toi [YTB] begins.Trainspotting comparisons are inevitable, as it is written in dialect, set in Scotland and features the drug scene and culture. In both books the overall narrative is about escaping the lower class schemes, escaping the hold drugs have on you, and growing up. But Welsh's Leith in the '90s and Armstrong's Lanarkshire in mid 2000's are different propositions.

Seven years later, Armstrong had his novel but the next challenge was publishing it. Was a story written in Lanarkshire vernacular about gangs a hard sell? “Oh, absolutely,” he laughs. “I did around 300 submissions before I managed to get an agent. People were interested in my story and the authenticity but some were very hesitant to commit to a novel in that dialect.”There are a lot of really interesting insights into classism in Scotland and Graeme emphasises that the people in this situation are no less intelligent than anyone else, even though people treat them like they are. They just haven’t had the chance at life, or the tools to give them the chance at life, that other people have. They have to fight to get out of a dead-end life. I read a lot of Goosebumps to tell you the truth, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. They were fantastic, I loved all that stuff. Quite young – very early high school if not primary school – I was on crime fiction. Ian Rankin and all of that sort of stuff. The Young Team is so much more than a story. To me it’s a guide on how to grow up and (hopefully) survive in a run down Scottish town left to rot by the powers that be; along with the young men who never stood a chance. The forgotten generation with nothing to do but drink, take drugs, fight and shag- constantly looking for that high, that euphoria, happiness.

Azzy dreams of another life. He faces his toughest fight of all – the fight for a different future. The Young Team is also a story of overcoming adversity. Over the course of the book the reader follows Azzy through 10 years of his life, living and feeling, courtesy of a literary tempo that adapts to the story, his first drunken experiences, the euphoria of his first drug binges, but also moments of darkness, when he loses one of his friends, and his attempts to escape from addiction. The only thing separating me from anyone in this book is privilege. I had the privilege of not going down a drinks/drugs route because the system wasn’t pitted against me. My parents have money, my parents are still together, I was encouraged to study, it was assumed that I’d be intelligent and academic, I was supported through school by teachers because I was seen as smart because I spoke “well”. ALL of this is privilege that isn’t afforded to a lot of children in Scotland, including today. Despite the success of Irvine Welsh – “the toughest and roughest renderer of dialect I’ve ever read,” states Armstrong – publishers were still unsure if The Young Team could work outside a Scottish market. But the novel’s vernacular isn’t just a stylistic decision, it’s inseparable from Azzy’s – and Armstrong’s – world. “It’s the way I talk, the way I think and the language of my community.”

His bestselling debut novel, ‘THE YOUNG TEAM’, is inspired by his experiences, and was published by Picador in 2020. It won the Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and was Scots Book of the Year 2021. It is currently being adapted for screen by Synchronicity Films. Armstrong left gang life behind when he was 16 after a friend died of a heroin overdose. “His funeral was traumatic,” he recalls. “You can’t help superimposing your mother’s face on to his and yourself into the coffin. I was in a very dark place, surrounded by death and destruction and that’s when I found Trainspotting. It mattered to me and I decided to stay in school and try to go to university. That road would take another five years but it wasn’t until finding faith on Christmas Eve 2012 that I finally managed to defeat my own drug addiction and take those first steps away from gang life. This Christmas makes 10 years drug free. I’m grateful. I’m still praying and I’m still here. Many aren’t. These stories don’t often have happy endings.”