Iain Banks's fiction captures the complexities of subjectivity and locale. At its best his writing offers insights into the tensions of masculine identity in a competitive consumerist culture. His prose can be vibrant, flexible, and stylish. It can catch idiosyncrasies without turning them into stereotypes, evoke complexity through nuances rather than omniscient intervention, and create narratives that are both technically sophisticated and compelling to read. Banks is an author whose works are both critically acclaimed and popular in the marketplace. In 1993 he was listed by Granta magazine as one of the twenty "Best Young British Novelists," and his fiction regularly appears in the best-seller lists. In recent years Banks has begun to receive attention from academic critics, and increasingly his works are on reading lists at many universities.

Iain Menzies Banks was born on 16 February 1954 in the Scottish town of Dunfermline and until the age of nine lived...