The Wasp Factory (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Iain Banks
- First Published: 1984
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Fantasy—cautionary
- Time of Work: The present
- Setting: A small island off the Scottish coast near Porteneil
- Genres: Long fiction, Fantasy
- Subjects: Dogs, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Mental illness, Islands, Scotland or Scottish people, Rites or ceremonies, Arson
- Locales: Islands, Scotland
The Plot
Frank L. Cauldhame, age seventeen, has been reared on an island, in isolation from other families, by his father, Angus. His life of strange rituals, such as mock wars, stocking lookout poles with the heads of dead animals, and creating strange defense systems, is interrupted by news that his mad brother, Eric, has escaped and is headed home.
In an attic safe from his eccentric, reclusive, biochemist father, Frank keeps the Wasp Factory, several meters of rambling construction based on an old bank clock face in which he ritually sacrifices a wasp, observing...
[The entire page is 950 words long]
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