FORTY YEARS AGO, A DEBUT NOVEL TURNED the stomachs of the genteel reviewers of the press. “A work of unparalleled depravity,” said the Irish Times. “Perhaps it is all a joke,” offered The Times, “meant to fool literary London into respect for rubbish.”
Not everyone hated it: this “outstandingly good” (Financial Times) “truly remarkable novel” (Daily Telegraph) about, er, “a family of Scots lunatics” (Sunday Express) sold more than a million copies, and launched one of the most impressive — and frustrating — literary careers of our time.
Iain Banks had been writing novels without success in his twenties (“a million words of crap”, said his friend Ken MacLeod), and decided to give up if he hadn’t been published by the time he turned 30. That notorious debut, The Wasp Factory, was in the end accepted and published on 16 February 1984, Banks’s 30th birthday.
was a striking launchpad. From the opening (later, when their reviewer had recovered) called “the most imaginative novelist of his generation”.