Iain [M.] Banks - Transition by Iain Banks. Narrated by Peter Kenny

Background

In an interview with The Guardian Banks explained what he was aiming for, "With Transition, I wanted to prove something. I wanted to show I could do something like The Bridge again because until now, that has been my favourite."[1]

While he has insisted it wasn't a commentary on American imperialism ("I don't think it's about America per se; it's more about power and the way that it is wielded in general") he does admit that the character The Philosopher is a way of addressing the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.[1]
Plot summary

Set between the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the 2008 financial crisis, Transition centres on a shadowy organisation called 'The Concern' (also known as 'L'Expédience'), and how the workings of this organisation affect the lives of the novel's multiple narrators and characters. Banks uses the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics theory to imagine "infinitudes" of parallel realities, between which The Concern's agents–known as Transitionaries–can "flit", intervening in events to produce what The Concern sees as beneficial outcomes for that world. Transitioning, or flitting, is only possible for people with a predisposed talent for such movement, who may only flit after ingesting a mysterious drug called 'septus'. When a Transitionary flits into another world, he or she temporarily takes control of the body of an existing inhabitant of that world, along with some of that body's residual idiosyncrasies (such as personality disorders and sexual preferences).