Trainspotting (novel)

Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, first published in 1993. It takes the form of a collection of short stories, written in either Scots, Scottish English or British English, revolving around various residents of Leith, Edinburgh who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are implicitly portrayed as addictions that serve the same function as heroin addiction. The novel is set in the late 1980s.

Famously described as "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent", the novel has since achieved a cult status, added to by the global success of the film based on it, Trainspotting (1996), directed by Danny Boyle. Welsh later wrote a sequel, Porno, in 2002. Skagboys, a novel that serves as a prequel, was published in April 2012.

Characters

Novel

A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.

The genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years". This view sees the novel's origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Ian Watt, however, in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel first came into being in the early 18th century,

Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era; the first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605.

The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."

Moon of Israel (novel)

Moon of Israel is a novel by Rider Haggard, first published in 1918 by John Murray. The novel narrates the events of the Biblical Exodus from Egypt told from the perspective of a scribe named Ana.

Haggard dedicated his novel to Sir Gaston Maspero, a distinguished Egyptologist and director of Cairo Museum.

Adaptation

His novel was the basis of a script by Ladislaus Vajda, for film-director Michael Curtiz in his 1924 Austrian epic known as Die Sklavenkönigin, or "Queen of the Slaves".

References

External links

Novel (disambiguation)

A novel is a long prose narrative.

Novel may also refer to:

See also

Trainspotting (soundtrack)

The Trainspotting soundtracks are two soundtrack albums released following the film adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel of the same name. The first was released on July 9, 1996. The comparatively huge fanbase for both the film and the original soundtrack prompted a release of a second soundtrack on October 21, 1997. This second soundtrack included songs from the film that didn't make the cut for the first album, as well as songs that didn't appear in the final film, but were involved at earlier stages or were used as inspiration by the filmmakers. The popularity of the first volume led EMI to reissue and continue to press it from 16 June 2003.

In 2007 the editors of Vanity Fair magazine ranked the original Trainspotting soundtrack as the 7th best motion picture soundtrack in history. It was ranked #17 on Entertainment Weekly's 100 Best Movie Soundtracks.

Track listing

Trainspotting: Music from the Motion Picture

Trainspotting #2: Music from the Motion Picture, Vol. #2

Trainspotting (film)

Trainspotting is a 1996 British black comedy crime drama film directed by Danny Boyle, and starring Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle and Kelly Macdonald. Based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh, the film was released in the United Kingdom on 23 February 1996.

The Academy Award nominated screenplay by John Hodge follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life. Beyond drug addiction, other themes in the film are exploration of the urban poverty and squalor in "culturally rich" Edinburgh.

The film has been ranked 10th by the British Film Institute (BFI) in its list of Top 100 British films of all time. In 2004 the film was voted the best Scottish film of all time in a general public poll.

Plot

Heroin addict Mark Renton and his circle of friends are introduced: amoral con artist Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson (also an addict), simple-minded, good-natured Daniel "Spud" Murphy (another addict), clean-cut athlete Tommy MacKenzie, and psychopath Francis "Franco" Begbie, who picks extremely violent fights with people who get in his way.

Railfan

A railfan, rail buff or train buff (American English), railway enthusiast or railway buff (Australian/British English), trainspotter or anorak (British English), or foamer (American railroaders), is a person interested in a recreational capacity in rail transport. Railfans of many ages can be found worldwide. Railfans often combine their interest with other hobbies, especially photography and videography, radio scanning, model railroading, studying railroad history and participating in train station and rolling stock preservation efforts. Magazines dedicated to railfanning include Trains and Railfan & Railroad.

Other names

The term metrophile is used by some to identify a railfan with a particular interest in metro (subway, underground) systems. The study of railways, or a general interest in them as a hobby, is sometimes jocularly known as "ferroequinology" (literally, "study of iron horses").

In the UK, railfans are sometimes called trainspotters or anoraks. The term gricer has been used in the UK since at least 1969, and is "Said to have been current in 1938 amongst members of the Manchester Locomotive Society", according to the Oxford English Dictionary. There has been speculation that the term derives from "grouser", one who collects dead grouse after a shoot, but other etymologies have also been suggested. In Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, however, the term Gricer has become increasingly popular within the Railway Enthusiast Community, with Griceling being used for younger enthusiasts.