‘A stunning book. Banks’ powerful imagination is joined to a rare ability to be truly funny while exploring a nightmare world’ Sunday Times
A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge – a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse.
Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
Praise for Iain Banks:
‘The most imaginative novelist of his generation’ The Times
‘His verve and talent will always be recognised, and his work will always find and enthral new readers’ Ken MacLeod, Guardian
‘His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent’ Neil Gaiman
‘An exceptional wordsmith’ Scotsman
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
The Bridge is serious, but playful; it is full of throwaway jokes, minor tangles for the reader/writer to sort out, political/cultural references to the kind of reality that rarely gets into British literature, and nuggets of surprising truth juxtaposed with outrageous lies... convincing in a way too little fantasy or mainstream literature is
Great artistry, great virtuosity... great exuberance
Iain Banks had a restless and expansive imagination; no two books ever ploughed the same furrow, which made any new title all the more exciting, and makes picking a favourite all the more challenging. If I could take only one Iain Banks book to my desert island, it would be The Bridge... It's a demanding, exciting, thought-provoking book written in evocative, often lyrical prose. Part of the reason I love it so much is the setting - the Forth Bridge that links Fife, where I grew up, with Edinburgh, where I live now