Canal Dreams

Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmosphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on her cello. . .

CANAL DREAMS is a novel of deceptive simplicity and dark, original power: stark psychological insights mesh with vividly realised scenarios in an ominous projection of global realpolitik. The result is yet another major landmark in the quite remarkable career of an outstanding modern novelist.

“Short, compact and brilliantly crafted-- Scotsman”

I must have read pretty much all Iain Banks... I cannot think of a more enjoyable writer... Canal Dreams would make a terrific move. It is just as topical now as it was when it appeared, perhaps more so. There is a love story, along with terrorists and hostages, great locations - mostly in the great lake in the middle of the Panama Canal - and it was thrilling -- Sam Neill Guardian
Extraordinary, brilliant, bloody Fay Weldon
Currents of dark wit swirl through Banks' writing, enriching its buoyancy... and, like Graham Greene, he can readily open the reader's senses to the 'foreignness' of places Scotland on Sunday
Short, compact and brilliantly crafted Scotsman
His technical facility with language now matches his instinct for storytelling, and the combination makes him one of the best British novelists Guardian
What makes Banks a significant novelist is the love and effort that go into his works, and his acute sense of the ways in which people can suffer Independent on Sunday
Banks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels (The Wasp Factory, Complicity), he's equally at home writing pure science fiction (like Feersum Endjinn) of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance. I suspect we have actual laws against this sort of thing in the United States, but Iain Banks, with the "M" or without, is currently a legal import William Gibson

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

'Apocalyptic is the first word that springs to mind to describe this violent and powerful novel in which Banks once again demostrates his extraordinary dark powers of imagination . . . impressive' The Times Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmostphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on the cello . . . 'Currents of dark wit swirl through Banks' writing, enriching its buoyancy . . . and, like Graham Greene, he can readily open the reader's senses to the "foreignness" of places' Scotland on Sunday

Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmosphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on her cello. . .CANAL DREAMS is a novel of deceptive simplicity and dark, original power: stark psychological insights mesh with vividly realised scenarios in an ominous projection of global realpolitik. The result is yet another major landmark in the quite remarkable career of an outstanding modern novelist.

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