The Wasp Factory: A Novel

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Simon and Schuster, Jul 2, 2013 - Fiction - 192 pages
The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath.

Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least:

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.

That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again.

It was just a stage I was going through.
 

Contents

The Sacrifice Poles
7
The Snake Park
22
In the Bunker
43
The Bomb Circle
62
A Bunch of Flowers
87
The Skull Grounds
104
Space Invaders
110
The Wasp Factory
119
What Happened to Eric
135
Running Dog
147
The Prodigal
158
What Happened to Me
179
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About the author (2013)

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the original publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, recently selected in a British poll as one of the top 100 novels of the century. Since then he has gained enormous popular and critical acclaim with further works of fiction and, as Iain M. Banks, science fiction. He lives in Scotland.

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