It's dangerous to judge a writer's personality by his books. Take Scottish author Iain Banks. Were he anything like Frank Cauldhame, the narrator of his debut novel, The Wasp Factory, you'd avoid being in the same building, much less the same room: a triple murderer at the age of 16, Cauldhame rationalises his grisly resume with the chilling one-liner: 'It was just a stage I was going through.'
Fortunately, the 53-year-old Banks proves to have rather more in common with Alban Wopuld, the troubled, rebellious but charming hero of his latest novel, The Steep Approach to Garbadale. 'To an extent,' Banks says, with the novelist's habitual wariness. 'Alban is quite similar to me, although he's younger and wittier and better looking. It's by no means a portrait, but Alban's views are pretty close to mine.'
Banks' first mainstream literary novel in six years, the winding, playful Garbadale explores similar territory to that of his best known book, The Crow Road: life and death in an eccentric Scottish family. Only now Banks has gone global, with one of the most memorable scenes occurring in Hong Kong.
The story revolves around the Wopulds, one of Britain's richest and most dysfunctional clans. Having made millions from a best-selling board game called Empire!, they're bickering about whether to sell the business to an American multinational. A company meeting reunites family members long separated - including the prodigal son, Alban - and forces all manner of suppressed tensions into the open, not least the truth about the death of Alban's mother years earlier.
Garbadale is typical mature Banks: as readable as ever, he's toned down the horror of his early novels in favour of stories that are both broader in scope and more tender in tone. Garbadale is probably the most autobiographical of his works to date, beginning life just as the author's 15-year marriage came to an end.
'I suppose it's a personal book,' he says. 'I began it in 2006. It was supposed to be written before,
but because my marriage was splitting up, it knocked everything into touch.'