Debut novelist, Graeme Armstrong, has won both a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award, in the annual awards presented by the Society of Authors.
The Betty Trask Award is given to writers under the age of 35, and The Somerset Award recognises books that travel. Judging the Somerset Maugham Award, Fred D'Aguiar said of THE YOUNG TEAM, “The Scottish language thrums and chimes in this novel; the hard lives bang against the anvil of received notions about brutality and vulnerability. The author's ear and empathy align in a universe perfectly pitched to broadcast the best route out of perdition.”
THE YOUNG TEAM was first published by Picador in 2020 to great acclaim, and became a Times Bestseller. Film rights are in development with Synchronicity Films. The novel tells of Azzy Williams, a young man whose character is inspired by Graeme’s own experience:
Azzy Williams is ready. Ready to smoke, pop pills, drink wine and ready to fight. But most of all, he’s ready to do anything for his friends, his gang, his young team.
Round here, in the schemes of the forgotten industrial heartland of Scotland, your mates, your young team – they’re everything.
Azzy Williams is fourteen; a rising star, this is his life and he loves it.
Azzy Williams is seventeen; he’s out of control.
Azzy Williams is twenty-one; he’d like to leave it all behind.
But a way out isn’t easy to find . . .
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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 after reading 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.
He regularly volunteers within the community visiting prisons and schools, giving talks on his experiences of gang-culture and substance abuse. He promotes a message of anti-violence and abstinence-based recovery.
PRAISE FOR THE YOUNG TEAM
“Sharp yet tender and mischievously funny, The Young Team pitches Armstrong straight into the first division of Scottish writers.” - The Guardian
‘Dialect that fizzes off the page’ – Observer
‘One of the most admired young voices in British fiction’ – The Times