The Wasp Factory

Iain Banks Press Reviews

A gothic horror story of quite exceptional quality... macabre, bizarre and... quite impossible to put down. There is a control and assurance in the book, an originality rare in established writers twice the author's age. This is an outstandingly good read - Financial Times

Iain Banks has written one of the most brilliant first novels I have come across for some time. His study of an obsessive personality is extraordinary, written with a clarity and attention to detail that is most impressive. One can only admire a truly remarkable novel - Daily Telegraph

If you are squeamish or easily frightened, then leave The Wasp Factory severely alone. The novel is saved from sheer beastliness by its black humour and its message. Read it if you dare - Daily Express

If a nastier, more vicious or distasteful novel appears this spring, I shall be surprised. But there is unlikely to be a better one either. You can hardly breathe for fear of missing a symbol, or a fine phrase, or a horror so chilling that your hair stands on end. Infinitely painful to read, grotesque but human, these pages have a total reality rare in fiction. A mighty imagination has arrived on the scene - Mail on Sunday

One of the top 100 novels of the century - Independent

A brilliant book, barmy and barnacled with the grotesque - New Statesman

Brilliant... irresistible... compelling - New York Times

A first novel of such curdling power and originality that whether you like it or not - and you may hate it - the arrival of its author Iain Banks must mark the literary debut of the year. It's astonishing, unsettling and brilliantly written - Cosmopolitan

A first novel not only of tremendous promise, but also of achievement, a minor masterpiece, perhaps. There is no label. It is an obsessive novel, a bad dream of a book. Death and blood and gore fill the pages, lightened only by the dark humour, the surreal touches, and the poetry of the thing. There is something foreign and nasty here, an amazing new talent - Punch

There is no denying the bizarre fertility of the author's imagination: his brilliant dialogue, his cruel humour, his repellent inventiveness. The majority of the literate public, however, will be relieved that only reviewers are obliged to look at any of it - Irish Times