Frank, no ordinary 16-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. His elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital. When news comes of Eric's escape, Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return. The Wasp Factoryis a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels. 'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different 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.' Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.