The SCOTNOTES booklets are a series of study guides to major Scottish writers and texts frequently used within literature courses, aimed at senior secondary sch

'Fierce contemporaneity, an acrobat imagination, social comment, sardonic wit... the peculiar sub-culture of cult religion is a natural for Banks' The Times A l

'One of the best opening lines of any novel' Guardian 'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly sn

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 c

In Scotland, a self-appointed executioner dispenses justice to fit the crime. Thus the lenient judge who let a rapist go is punished by being raped, while a man