Book· 1993· Literary

Trainspotting

by Irvine Welsh

Trainspotting: 1 recorded work traces back to it, and it draws on 1 recorded source.

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What Trainspotting influenced

Works that record this one as a source, with the evidence a contributor gave.

Trainspotting

Film · 1996

AdaptationHIGH

Danny Boyle's film adapts Irvine Welsh's novel, credited as based on it, with John Hodge's screenplay keeping its Edinburgh addicts, its dialect voice-over and its episodes.

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Real-world influences

Events, places, movements and ideas outside fiction that this work is recorded as drawing on.

Culture

Real world

Real-world influenceHIGH
  • Heroin subculture
  • Punk culture

Irvine Welsh's novel comes from the heroin scene of 1980s Edinburgh, written in the Scots of the housing schemes, among friends shaped by punk, unemployment and addiction.

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About the work

Trainspotting

Set in the Mark Renton universe.

It is written in Scots and Scottish 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 effectively addictions. The novel is set in the late 1980s and has been described by The Sunday Times as "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent". The title is an ironic reference to the characters’ frequenting of the disused Leith Central railway station.

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