Iain Banks, The Bridge

Martyn Colebrook (University of Hull)
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The Bridge

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.

The Bridge

is derived from an earlier Iain Banks manuscript that remains unpublished, with the plot based on “a man waking up in the desert with no memory but with a circular mark emblazoned across his chest.”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…

2048 words

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 19 March 2024.]

1386 The Bridge 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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