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''On the Beach'' is a 1957 post-apocalyptic novel written by British-Australian author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the northern hemisphere following a nuclear war a year previously. As the radiation approaches each person deals with their impending death in different ways. Shute's initial story appeared as a four-part series ''The Last Days on Earth'' in the London weekly periodical Sunday Graphic in April 1957. For the novel Shute expanded on the storyline.〔The entry "NORWAY, NEVIL SHUTE", on page 456 of the "Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1957" by Library of Congress. Copyright Office. Retrieved from Google Books, 8 May 2012.〕 The story has been adapted twice as a film (in 1959 and 2000) and as a BBC radio broadcast in 2008. ==Title== The phrase "on the beach" is a Royal Navy term that means "retired from the Service." The title also refers to the T. S. Eliot poem ''The Hollow Men,'' which includes the lines: Printings of the novel, including the first 1957 edition by William Morrow and Company, NY, contain extracts from the poem on the title page, under Nevil Shute's name, including the above quotation and the concluding lines: The 2000 film ends with a quote from a Walt Whitman poem entitled "On the Beach at Night", describing how frightening an approaching cloud bank seemed at night to the poet's child, blotting the stars out one by one, as the father and child stood on the beach on Massachusetts' North Shore.〔"Walt Whitman : On the Beach at Night". Retrieved 2012-05-11 from (Portable Poetry ), which states it is an 1871 poem. Not to be confused with another Whitman poem "On the Beach at Night Alone".〕 As much as it resembles the plot of Shute's novel, the book gives no reference to the Whitman poem, while the T.S. Eliot poem is presented in the book's front matter. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「On the Beach (novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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