Iain Banks final novel set for June release

THE last novel to be written by Iain Banks will be published on 20 June, according to his publisher.

The Fife-based author revealed last week that he was suffering from advanced gall bladder cancer and only has months to live.

In an emotional statement to his readers, he said he hoped to still be alive when his last novel, called The Quarry, was published. “My heroic publishers are doing all they can to bring the publication date of my new novel forward by as much as four months to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves,” he wrote.

Publisher Little, Brown has now revealed that the novel which Banks, author of The Crow Road, Complicity and The Wasp Factory, has already completed, has been brought forward to June.

Ursula Brown, chief executive of Little, Brown book group, said that the entire publishing house was in shock at Banks’s diagnosis.

“Iain Banks has been published by Little, Brown for his entire career, since paperback publication of his first novel The Wasp Factory in 1985, so his news is a terrible shock for the whole company,” she said.

“Now, of course, that news is reverberating round the world of books, from his many fans to booksellers and reviewers around the country – everyone who has ever come into contact with Iain shares our shock and sadness.”