is Iain Banks’ most ambitious and advanced novel, combining the themes of power, identity, fantasy, dreams and game-playing which are recurrent throughout his work. It is also the novel demonstrates the inception of “The Culture”, Iain Banks’ Utopian society that features so prominently in his science-fiction novels.

is derived from an earlier Iain Banks manuscript that remains unpublished, with the plot based on “a man waking up in the desert with no memory but with a circular mark emblazoned across his chest.” In his published version, Iain Banks’ portrays a politically active, opulent middle-class engineer, Alex, whose working class roots and Socialist-supporting tendencies conflict with his financial gain under the Conservative Government. He is…

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Citation: Colebrook, Martyn. "The Bridge". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 January 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1386, accessed 23 November 2024.]