'A deeply satirical and thought-provoking thriller' Sunday Express

A couple of ice cubes, first, then the apple that really started it all. A loft apartment in London's East End; cool but doomed, demolition and redevelopment slated for the following week. Ken Nott, devoutly contrarian leftish shock-jock attending a mid-week wedding lunch, starts dropping stuff off the roof towards the deserted car park a hundred feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartment's remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center...


Praise for Iain Banks:

'The most imaginative novelist of his generation' The Times

'His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers' Ken MacLeod, Guardian

'His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent' Neil Gaiman

'An exceptional wordsmith' Scotsman

Iain Banks's classic novel reissued with a striking new cover

About the Author
Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. He gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels. Iain Banks died in June 2013.

Reviews
A thrilling read, it's a dazzlingly clever, edgy, suspenseful book * Scotland on Sunday *
Hugely entertaining * Daily Telegraph *
Banks's clever, tense book gives a good idea of where fiction might usefully go with this material. Staying away from the media described events at Ground Zero, he impressively details the social aftermath in London: paranoia on underground trains and in high buildings, suspicion of foreigners, a delirious new edge to political argument and sexual encounters -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *
A Buchanesque adventure yarn set in twenty-first-century London * The Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780349139241
Author Iain Banks
Format Paperback
Page Count 448
Imprint Abacus
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 304g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 130mm * 28mm