Marabou Stork Nightmares Marabou Stork Nightmares Marabou Stork Nightmares is an experimental novel by Irvine Welsh, and his second novel. The book's narrative is split into two styles: a conventional first person account of the past and a more surreal, stream of consciousness account of an otherworldly present. Like many of Welsh's novels, it is written in Edinburgh Scots dialect. The plot consists of the memories and hallucinations of the protagonist, Roy Strang, making him an extreme example of an unreliable narrator. Roy Strang narrates the book from an (at first) unexplained coma, which he has been in for the previous two years.
What Is a Nation? What Is a Nation? "What is a Nation?" ("Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?") is an 1882 lecture by French historian Ernest Renan (1823–1892), known for the statements that a nation is "a daily referendum", and that nations are based as much on what the people jointly forget, as what they remember. It is frequently quoted or anthologized in works of history or political science pertaining to nationalism and national identity. Renan wrote "What is a Nation" in order to symbolize the nationalism which was born in France as a result of the French Revolution of 1789. Renan begins his essay by noting