Transition

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What to expect

A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?

On the Concern's books are Temudjin Oh, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice; and a nameless, faceless torturer known only as the Philosopher. And then there's the renegade Mrs Mulverhill, who recruits rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, hiding out from a dirty past in a forgotten hospital ward. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course.

Critics Review

  • Wildly imaginative… A corker of a thriller, a classic good versus bad tale, and one which the author uses to tackle some seriously big moral and philosophical issues – but always in his typically light-handed and darkly humorous fashion… A book that makes you think, one that makes you look at the world around you in a different light, and it’s also a properly thrilling read

    Independent on Sunday

  • Transition is Banks at his exuberant, flamboyant, head-spinning best

    Financial Times

  • Iain Banks is gifted with wonderful fluency and dizzying imaginative flair

    Daily Mail

  • A labyrinthine tale of great conception and craft… A memorable array of characters… Transition is awash with energy and dark wit

    Sunday Business Post

  • Brilliantly compulsive

    Big Issue

  • Baroque, digressive, kinetic, teeming with big ideas and grand theories, it’s a novel to get lost in… gripping

    The Times

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Narrator

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