Dead Air

The action unfolds in a London loft flat in the East End, located in an old factory slated for demolition within days. Its resident, Ken Nott, is a radio presenter who thrives on provocation and deliberate contrarianism, with politics that lean loosely to the left.

A wedding breakfast in the building takes a strange turn when guests start lobbing fruit off a balcony onto an empty car park ten storeys below. The game escalates to old televisions, a blown speaker, bean bags and other unwanted furniture, then to smashing up the flat and tossing things that still work. Soon phones begin ringing, and everyone is told to switch on a television, where an aircraft has just hit the World Trade Center.

The novelist Iain Banks, a Scot who also writes science fiction under the name Iain M. Banks, is known for narratives that move quickly and grapple with the moral dilemmas and injustices of the real world. This 2002 novel is set in present-day London and combines his dark wit and restless pace.