Iain Banks

Book Festival day planner

Our guide on the festival's must-see events

10 Aug 2009

As with most of the festivals, the Book Festival is a scary prospect at first glance. Here, Lizzie Mitchell maps out a plan which should make the minefield a little easier to negotiate. All events are based in Charlotte Square Gardens.

Book and Literary festivals in Scotland 2010

28 May 2010

With Glasgow’s Aye Write! and Aberdeen’s Word behind us for another year, Scotland’s book lovers are now holding their breath for the real heavyweight of the nation’s literary calendar, the Edinburgh Book Festival (Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, Sat…

Iain Banks - Stonemouth

The spiritual follow-up to The Crow Road is slightly flawed, but still a page-turner

27 Mar 2012

For those Iain Banks fans not overly keen on his sci-fi work, it will be a blessed relief to see no mention of a middle initial ‘M’ in his name here. For those who loved the prickly relationships and family machinations in the smalltown Scotland of The…

The Wasp Factory

10 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Tron, Glasgow, Thu 17–Sat 26 Apr The remarkable aspect of Iain Banks’ disturbing Grand Guignol first novel is its capacity to continue to fascinate 24 years after its first publication. The story revolves around alienated Frank, a teenager…

Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory (1984)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

They say that often an author's debut novel is his or her most autobiographical. Well if that's the case, heaven help Iain Banks. The Wasp Factory created a stushie amongst bamboozled literary critics who didn't know how to take this coruscating…

Wigtown Book Festival 2010

28 May 2010

‘The best way to explain the Wigtown Book Festival is to explain Wigtown first of all,’ says festival director Adrian Turpin. ‘It’s Scotland’s National Book Town, which means it has lots of bookshops and book businesses. It’s like a mini Hay-on-Wye…

Diana Athill, Paddy Doyle and Iain Banks set for Wigtown Book Festival

15 Sep 2009

Tucked away on the Galloway coast, pretty little Wigtown is home to one of Scotland's worst kept literary secrets. After a bumper year in 2008, the annual Wigtown Book Festival looks set for its busiest year on record, with more than 170 events over 10…

Iain Banks - Transition

18 Aug 2009

Iain Banks’ words have a habit of getting inside your head with certain phrases, ideas and characters left tunnelling their way into the consciousness long after you’ve put his books down. Latest offering Transition is no different. While his writing…

The Wasp Factory

8 May 2008

REVIVAL Regal Theatre, Bathgate, Thu 15 May, then touring Our fractured, alienating and individualist society is bound to produce some disquieting anomalies among its youth. In a world where the first priority is self, our capacity to empathise with…

The Wasp Factory

24 Apr 2008

Malcolm Sutherland’s adaptation of Iain Banks’ acclaimed novel hasn’t been seen in a major production since its debut in the early 90s. The tale of Frank, a deluded teenage psycho with surprises not only for his audience but even himself, looks like…

Aye Write! - Best of the rest

28 Feb 2008

Asne Seierstad The Norwegian journalist who has reported on war in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan discusses her new book, Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechyna. Fri 7 Mar, 6pm. Kathleen Turner She gave young adolescents many sleepless nights with her…

Iain Banks

Getting climate change into a family saga

9 Aug 2007

Iain Banks can probably be accused of many things, but lack of imagination isn’t one of them. While most of his outlandish ideas get channelled into his sci-fi work, there’s still plenty of inventive stuff to be found in his mainstream novels.

Hitlist - The best books, comics & events

7 May 2007

Hitlist

Iain Banks

Family Affairs

26 Feb 2007

Is it possible, I wonder, to detect a softening of attitude as the years advance for Iain Banks, the one-time enfant terrible of the Scottish literary establishment? Perhaps, but only in the ways which don’t quite seem to matter so much as you get…

Scots writers to look out for this year

New Chapters

12 Feb 2007

Rhona Cameron The Naked Drinking Club Having dipped her toe into the literary pool with her Musselburgh memoir 1979, the stand-up comic and reality TV survivor returns with a fictional tale of a twentysomething Edinburgher getting lost and loaded…