num_pages: 244
description: Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outsIde a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly. Iain Banks' celebrated first novel is a work of extraordinary originality, imagination and horrifying horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; and compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all.
language: English
title: The Wasp Factory
titlecomplete: The Wasp Factory
characters: Angus Cauldhame, Eric Cauldhame, Mrs Clamp, Diggs, Frank Cauldhame
genres: Dark, Thriller, Novels, Literature, Horror, Scotland, Classics, Mystery, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 93761
places: Scotland
awards: awardedAt: 694252800000
name: Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis
category: Foreign Novel
publisher: Little, Brown