The Wasp Factory

The Wasp Factory is a novel by the Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1984 and his first. Earlier Banks had written a number of science-fiction novels that nobody accepted, and he turned to a more mainstream story about a young man on a remote Scottish island.

The narrator is sixteen-year-old Frank Cauldhame, who lives with his father outside a remote village in the north of Scotland. His mother left years earlier, and his older brother, Eric, is held in a psychiatric hospital.

Frank's days go to private rituals, including the wasp factory of the title, a device he uses to make predictions, and to the history of violence he has already committed. The household runs on his father's eccentric inventions and on rules of Frank's own making.

When Eric escapes from the hospital and begins working his way home, Frank starts preparing for a visit he knows is coming, filling the days by adding to his rituals and going back over the past. The novel is narrated entirely in Frank's voice, and it is a standalone book.