Dark family secrets, a long-lost love affair and a multi-million pound gaming business are at the heart of The Steep Road to Garbadale. The Wopuld family built its fortune on a board game called Empire! - now a hugely successful computer game. So successful, the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the firm out. Young renegade Alban, who has been evading the family clutches for years, is run to ground and persuaded to attend the forthcoming family gathering - part birthday party, part Extraordinary General Meeting - convened by Win, Wopuld matriarch and most powerful member of the board, at Garbadale, the family's highland castle. Being drawn back into the bosom of the clan brings an inevitable and disconcerting confrontation with Alban's past. What drove his mother to take her own life? And is he yet ready to see Sophie, his beautiful, enchanting cousin and teenage love, at the EGM? Grandmother Win's revelations will radically alter Alban's perspective for ever.
'Banks is unsurpassed at presenting clear, small-scale, central images, with behind them looming shapes in chiaroscuro. He convinces you, also, that this is the way the world really is.' Times Literary Supplement
'Still a master. Banks's evocation of the tortures and travails of first love is moving and lyrical.' Independent
'Banks may make all kinds of demands as far as the structure of his fiction is concerned, but, taken sentence by sentence, he is unrivalled for clarity and pleasure ... His most accomplished book since The Crow Road.' Literary Review
The Wasp Factory (1984) established Iain Banks as an original voice in Scottish fiction. Since then, he has published more than twenty novels which have attracted critical acclaim as well as the attention of film-makers. The Crow Road (1992) became a successful BBC TV series. Under the name of Iain M. Banks, he has also achieved success as a science fiction writer and The Algebraist won the 2005 Hugo Award.
"I write because I love it, I enjoy it, I've spent most of my life trying to do it better, and I can make a living from it: beats a day job".
The Steep Approach to Garbadale is published by Little, Brown.
www.iainbanks.net