THE WASP FACTORY was published in 1984.
It went on to be named ‘one of the top 100 novels of the 20th century’ by The Independent.
Enter – if you can bear it – the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.
‘Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That’s my score to date. Three. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.’
Frank lives with his father on a tidal island outside a remote Scottish village. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale.
When news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital, Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly
The Wasp Factory was Macmillan’s lead title for Spring 1984.
At the time, Raymond Gardner noted, “First novels usually appear in editions of 3,000. Macmillan decided on a print run of 10,000 copies of The Wasp Factory. The book comes out next Thursday and it is already reprinting. The French edition will appear shortly [and] American rights have been sold for ‘an undisclosed sum.’”
Iain had promised friends and family that he would quit trying to be a writer and get ‘a proper job’ if he couldn’t get published by the time he turned 30. As books were always published on Thursdays, it’s particularly elegant that The Wasp Factory was published on Thursday 16th February, 1984 – Iain’s 30th birthday.
By the time the paperback was released, the publishers had made the unusual decision to include all the critics advance reviews – three full pages of them – both good and, well, bad is putting it mildly...
Click below to discover just how much of an impact The Wasp Factory made...
The Wasp Factory reviews
It has now been published in 23 territories, in 24 languages.
Italian cover
American cover
American cover
American cover
“There is something foreign and nasty here, an amazing new talent.” Punch
Asked years later if he had any idea just how extreme reactions would be, Iain said, “No. When I was writing it, there were even times when I thought, ‘no-one’s going to want to read this, this is boring.’ That was usually when I threw in another phone call from Eric to lift the pace. It never occurred to me that the book was going to be as controversial as it was.”
In 2009, Little, Brown published a 25th Anniversary special edition paperback with a new preface by Iain and, in 2024, a 40th Anniversary special edition hardback.
