'unreliable narrative' | The narrator declares that Marcas is "semblable à Pitt, qui s'était donné l'Angleterre pour femme" ("like William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham | Richard Vaughan (actor and narrator) |
The brand is cited in Salman Rushdie's post-colonial novel Midnight's Children, where it is, however, mis-attributed to the former British importer and manufacturer W.D. & H.O. Wills: Rushdie later explains this as symptomatic of an 'unreliable narrative' device in his essay on the book's 'errata'.
Frank's father's deception of his son (one of Banks' central themes, which appears again in The Crow Road), and the propensity of people for deceiving themselves, are accentuated in the final chapters of the book when new facts force the reader to reassess completely the opinions formed about the narrator.
His debut novel The Interloper, published by Other Press in 2007, grapples with themes of family, crime, and revenge through the lens of an unreliable narrator.