Canal Dreams is a novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1989.
Famous Japanese cellist Hisako Onoda boards a supertanker en route to her concert in Rotterdam, as she is afraid to fly. The ship is trapped in the Panama Canal as a result of an international crisis and anchors in Gatun Lake.
The plot is fairly simple. In the first half, when the ship is stranded but unharmed, the mood is bucolic and philosophical, and the main challenge Hisako has is to pass the time in a tropical lake. She has an affair with one of the ship's officers and they go scuba diving together. She practises the cello.
She is worried about the future, and has violent nightmares and flashbacks to her early life in Japan.
She also spends time with the other passengers, among them a South African engineer and an erudite Egyptian.
In the much darker second half, the book becomes an almost Die Hard-like thriller. Guerrillas (who turn out to be agents provocateur) take over the ship. The rebels kill everybody aboard except Hisako and rape her. She avenges herself, killing the pirates. The violence of the rebel takeover and of Hisako's revenge is described very graphically.