Sunday 9th March
18:00 - 19:00
Fiction
£7/£6
Two of Scotland’s leading writers discuss their new books. Iain M Banks’ Matter, the story of a crime within a war which means for one man a desperate flight and a search for the people who can clear his name, for his brother a constant threat of treachery and murder, and for their sister going back to a place she thought she’d abandoned forever. In Ken MacLeod’s The Execution Channel, fighting has spread across the Middle East and Central Asia to the borders of China. In the US, refugees from climate–change disaster subsist in FEMA camps. Images of official executions circulate on the Internet like al Qaeda videos. Interference in someone else’s war is never a simple matter. Both authors are on top form – Banks with a novel of great wit and serious purpose; MacLeod providing, as The Times said, 'politically engaged, speculative fiction at its finest, with a conclusion that's absolutely mind-blowing'.