This is the book that Iain Banks (who also writes Sci Fi as Iain M. Banks) wrote as a deliberate attempt to push publishers' buttons with a lot of current themes so they would publish him. It provoked a storm of literary controversy at the time, and a representative range of reviews are, unusually, included in the front pages.

I thought it was very well written, although it read like an exercise in writing to a formula, and it is a clever, if not brilliant novel. But I also found the subject matter sufficiently distasteful that I won't be reading it again.

Release planned for Sunday, February 15, 2004 at Tilley's Cafe in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia.