Search results for ""Faber Faber""
Faber & Faber Pink Mist
Winner of Wales Book of the Year Pink Mist is a verse-drama about three young soldiers from Bristol who are deployed to Afghanistan. School friends still in their teens, Arthur, Hads and Taff each have their own reasons for enlisting. Within a short space of time they return to the women in their lives (a mother, a wife, a girlfriend), all of whom must now share the psychological and physical aftershocks of their service. A work of great dramatic power, documentary integrity and emotional intensity, Pink Mist uses everyday yet heightened speech to excavate the human cost of modern warfare. Drawing upon interviews with soldiers and their families, as well as ancient texts such as the medieval Welsh poem Y Gododdin, it is the first extended lyric narrative to emerge from the devastating conflict in Afghanistan.
£9.99
Faber & Faber Haweswater: 'A writer of show-stopping genius.' GUARDIAN
The prizewinning debut from Britain's most exciting contemporary novelist.In a remote dale in a northern English county, a centuries-old rural community has survived into the mid-1930s almost unchanged. But then Jack Liggett drives in from the city, the spokesman for a Manchester waterworks company with designs on the landscape for a vast new reservoir. The dale must be evacuated, flooded, devastated; its water pumped to the Midlands and its community left in ruins.Liggett further compounds the village's problems when he begins a troubled affair with Janet Lightburn, a local woman of force and character who is driven to desperate measures in an attempt to save the valley.Told in luminous prose, with an intuitive sense for period and place, Haweswater remembers a rural England that has been lost for many decades.
£9.99
Faber & Faber The Last Days of Troy
Simon Armitage is rightly celebrated as one of the country's most original and engaging poets; but he is also an adaptor and translator of some of our most important epics, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Death of King Arthur and Homer's Odyssey. The latter, originally a commission for BBC Radio, rendered the classical tale with all the flare, wit and engagement that we have come to expect from this most distinctive of contemporary authors, and in so doing brought Odysseus's return from the Trojan War memorably to life.
£10.99
Faber & Faber The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013
The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 draws from every stage of the poet's storied career. Here are examples of his very earliest work, like 'In My Eighteenth Year', published when the poet himself was still a teenager; his first widely celebrated verse, like 'A Far Cry from Africa', which speaks of violence, of loyalties divided in one's very blood; his mature work, like 'The Schooner Flight' from The Star-Apple Kingdom; and his late masterpieces, like the tender 'Sixty Years After', from the 2010 collection White Egrets. Across sixty-five years, Walcott has grappled with the themes that have defined his work as they have defined his life: the unsolvable riddle of identity; the painful legacy of colonialism on his native Caribbean island of St Lucia; the mysteries of faith and love; the trauma of growing old, of losing friends, family, one's own memory. This collection, selected by Walcott's friend the poet Glyn Maxwell, will prove as enduring as the questions, the passions, that have driven Walcott to write for more than half a century.
£18.00
Faber & Faber Collected Stories
A landmark event: the collected stories of 'one of the greatest writers of our era' (Hilary Mantel) and 'the Irish novelist everyone should read' (Colm Tóibín).'Wise and compelling ... Elegiac and graceful.' David Mitchell'I have admired, even loved, John McGahern's work since his first novel.' Melvyn Bragg'Gentle, lyrical, an amorist of language, a natural historian of the soul.' Irish Times'Exquisite stories . . . Here is a Dublin of tatty dancehalls and uneasy courtships, of kisses in damp doorways and unfulfilled hungerings . . . Writing of extraordinary beauty.' Guardian
£12.99
Faber & Faber Daddy's Sandwich
Daddy, would you like a sandwich, with all your favourite things...? Join one little girl on her quest to make her father the perfect sandwich, whether he likes it or not... You're in for a wicked surprise!From Squishy McFluff author Pip Jones and bright new talent Laura Hughes, this is a brilliantly funny and charming picture book perfect for ages 3+ and for Fathers' Day gifts.'A delightful treat of a story' Guardian, Best New Children's Books'What small child would not love this amazing picture book to bits!' Books for Keeps
£7.37
Faber & Faber 1,339 QI Facts To Make Your Jaw Drop
EVERYTHING TO PLAY FOR - A NEW BOOK BY QI ELVES JAMES HARKIN AND ANNA PTASZYNSKI - IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW'I love these books ... the best books ever. Brilliant' Chris Evans1,399 QI Facts To Make Your Jaw Drop by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson and James Harkin is packed with even more fascinating facts.Whilst you're bending over to grab your socks following the succes of 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off, don't forget pick up your jaw as the QI team returns with a fresh stack of facts to astonish and enlighten.Did you know that:Pigs suffer from anorexia.It is impossible to whistle in a spacesuit.The first computer mouse was made of wood.Rugby School's first official rugby kit in 1871 included a bow tie.Lord Kitchener had four spaniels called Shot, Bang, Miss and Damn.J. K Rowling has no middle name.If there are any facts you don't believe, or if you want to know more about them, all the sources can be found on QI's website.
£8.99
Faber & Faber Trapped in History: Kenya, Mau Mau and Me
Trapped in History tells how the British colonised Kenya and how African nationalism arose under Jomo Kenyatta. It describes the terrifying first attacks by the guerrilla freedom fighters known as Mau Mau. Though defeated, the Mau Mau hastened the end of British rule in Kenya. Trapped in History explores the effect the uprising on the author, who grew up as a child in the Kenya colony.The book is both a history, as well as a memoir, of the end of Empire.
£22.50
Faber & Faber Lord of the Flies: New Educational Edition
First published in 1954, William Golding's debut novel, now a classic, is a stark story of survival, probing the depths of human nature, and what happens when civilization collapses. As dystopian stories like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale surge in popularity, this haunting tale of a group of young boys stranded on a desert island still captivates schoolchildren around the world, raising timeless and profound questions about how easily society can slip into chaos and savagery when rules and order have been abandoned. This new educational edition provides supplementary material, chapter summaries, discussion questions and additional teaching resources to help guide students and support teachers throughout the text. When a plane crashes on a remote island, a group of schoolboys are the sole survivors. As the reality of their situation sets in, the boys attempt to establish control and their world gradually descends into brutal savagery. As Catcher in the Rye became the classic coming-of-age tale, Lord of the Flies is the classic story of innocence lost. A teacher himself, Golding clearly understood how to interest children with a gripping story and strong, sympathetic characters. The novel serves as a catalyst for thought-provoking discussion and analysis of universal issues, not only concerning the capabilities of humans for good and evil and the fragility of moral inhibition, but beyond. The boys' struggle to find a way of existing in a community with no fixed boundaries invites readers to evaluate the concepts involved in social and political constructs and moral frameworks. Symbolism is strong throughout, revealing both the boys' capacity for empathy and hope, as well as illuminating the darkest corners of the human spirit. Ideas of community, leadership, and the rule of law are called into question as the reader has to consider who has a right to power, why, and what the consequences of the acquisition of power may be. All of these concerns are current today and can be easily related to the novel through effective teaching and learning. This new educational edition encourages original and independent thought from students, as well as guiding them through the text. The supplementary material includes a biographical section on William Golding, and his own interpretive essay 'Fable' on Lord of the Flies, as well as providing information about the novel's historical context, which will be ideal for students completing GCSE and A-Level courses as well as those studying the novel worldwide. At the end of the text there are chapter summaries, comprehension questions, discussion points and activities plus a glossary of less familiar words or phrases. All of these are intended to inspire and generate creative teaching, learning and love of the novel.
£8.99
Faber & Faber Turkish Awakening: Behind the Scenes of Modern Turkey
Born in London to a Turkish mother and British father, Alev Scott moved to Istanbul to discover what it means to be Turkish in a country going through rapid political and social change, with an extraordinary past still linked to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and an ever more surprising present under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.From the European buzz of modern-day Constantinople to the Arabic-speaking towns of the south-east, Turkish Awakening investigates mass migration, urbanisation and economics in a country moving swiftly towards a new position on the world stage. This is the story of discovering a complex country from the outside-in, a candid account of overturned preconceptions and fresh understanding. Relating wide-ranging interviews and colourful personal experience, the author charts the evolving course of a country bursting with surprises - none more dramatic than the unexpected political protests of 2013 in Taksim Square, which have brought to light the emerging demands of a newly awakened Turkish people. Mass migration, urbanisation and a growing awareness of human rights have changed the social, economic and physical landscapes of a powerful country, and the 2013 protests were just one indication of the changes afoot in today's Turkey. Threatened as it is by recent developments in Syria and Iraq and the approaching danger of ISIS. Encompassing topics as varied as Aegean camel wrestling, transgender prostitution, politicised soap operas and riot tourism, this is a revelatory, at times humorous, at times moving, portrait of a country which is coming of age.
£12.99
Faber & Faber Fragrant Harbour
'It's Hong Kong,' she said. 'Heung gong. Fragrant harbour.'Fragrant Harbour is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span Asia's last seventy years. Tom Stewart leaves England to seek his fortune, and finds it in running Hong Kong's best hotel. Sister Maria is a beautiful and uncompromising Chinese nun whom Stewart meets on the boat. Dawn Stone is an English journalist who becomes the public face of money and power and big business. Matthew Ho is a young Chinese entrepreneur whose life has been shaped by painful choices made long before his birth.The complacency of colonial life in the 1930s; the horrors of the Japanese occupation during the Second World War; the post-war boom and the handover of the city to the Chinese - all these are present in Fragrant Harbour, an epic novel of one of the world's great cities.
£9.99
Faber & Faber The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
It is 1985, and Greta Wells wishes she lived in any time but this one: she has lost her brother to AIDS, her lover Nathan to another woman, and can not seem to go on alone. To ease her sadness, her doctor suggest an unusual procedure, one that opens doors of insight into the relationships in her life, her conflicting affections, and the limitations put on a woman's life. Throughout, Greta glimpses versions of war, history, herself, and the people she loves, and as the procedures come to an end, she realizes she must make a choice: one which will close every door but one, forever.
£9.99
Faber & Faber And the Sun Shines Now: How Hillsborough and the Premier League Changed Britain
WINNER OF THE NEW WRITER AWARD AT THE CROSS SPORTS BOOK AWARDSSHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE, THE GORDON BURN PRIZE AND FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE CROSS SPORTS BOOK AWARDSFEATURED IN THE OBSERVER'S SPORTS WRITERS' BOOKS OF THE YEARAnd the Sun Shines Now is a book about why Hillsborough happened, and how the flawed response to the disaster created a 'whole new ball game' but destroyed a culture. The Taylor Report. All-seater stadia. Police lies. Political neglect. Murdoch. The oligarchs. And an FA plan to gentrify football. But what happens when you take the people's game away from the people? What happens to the game, and what happens to the people? Powerful, funny, soulful and brutal, Adrian Tempany's acclaimed book exposes the real cost of the modern game . . . and the forces that shaped it.
£12.99
Faber & Faber Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary and utterly ruthless empire builders, with few resources but breathtaking ambition, attempted to seize the Indian Ocean, destroy Islam and take control of world trade.Told with Roger Crowley's customary skill and verve, this is narrative history at its most vivid - an epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, it brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors - men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire - who set in motion five hundred years of European colonisation and unleashed the forces of globalisation.
£12.99
Faber & Faber Flight Behaviour: Author of Demon Copperhead, Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction
TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONWINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONTHE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR'One of the best books about climate change.' NAOMI KLEIN 'Lyrical, socially engaged and passionate.' Sunday Times'There are many moments of lightness ... and of great beauty, too.' Independent'A compelling plot with lyrical passages and flashes of humour.' Sunday TelegraphA captivating, topical and deeply human story touching on class, poverty and climate change by the award-winning, global bestselling author of Demon Copperhead and The Lacuna"The flames now appeared to lift from individual treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a campfire when it is poked. The sparks spiralled upward in swirls like funnel clouds. Twisters of brightness against grey sky."On the Appalachian Mountains above her home, a young mother discovers a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature: the monarch butterflies have not migrated south for the winter this year. Is this a miraculous message from God, or a spectacular sign of climate change. Entomology expert, Ovid Byron, certainly believes it is the latter. He ropes in Dellarobia to help him decode the mystery of the monarch butterflies.
£10.31
Faber & Faber A Grief Observed
The perennial classic: this intimate journal chronicling the Narnia author's experience of grief after his wife's death has consoled readers for half a century with its 'sensitive and eloquent' magic (Hilary Mantel)'An intimate, anguished account of a man grappling with the mysteries of faith and love ... Elegant and raw ... A powerful record of thought and emotion experienced in real time.' Guardian 'Raw and modern ... This unsentimental, even bracing, account of one man's dialogue with despair becomes both compelling and consoling ... A contemporary classic.' Observer'A source of great consolation ... Lewis deploys his genius for vivid imagery ... It is a relief for the reader to find that he or she is not alone in the intense loneliness or feelings of anguish that bereavement brings.' Henry Marsh, The Times'Testimony from a sensitive and eloquent witness [on] 'The Human Condition'. It offers an interrogation of experience and a glimmer of hardwon hope. It allows one bewildered mind to reach out to another. Death is no barrier to that.' Hilary Mantel'Here, sorrow and despair, the tiredness and numbness and petulance and nightmarishness of grief, all have their full, uncontrolled, experienced force ... [Such] radical openness ... Brilliant.' Francis Spufford***No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.Narnia author C.S. Lewis had been married to his wife for four blissful years. When she died of cancer, he found himself alone, inconsolable in his grief. In this intimate journal, he chronicles the aftermath of the bereavement and mourning with blazing honesty. He grapples with a crisis of religious faith, navigating hope, rage, despair, and love - but eventually regains his bearings, finding his way back to life.A luminous modern classic, A Grief Observed has offered solace to countless readers for decades. This companion edition combines the original text with personal responses from Hilary Mantel, Rowan Williams, Francis Spufford, Maureen Freely, Kate Saunders, Jessica Martin and Jenna Bailey.***What readers are saying:'A truly great book - inspirational and untold help.' 'Every human being, living or dead, understands what Lewis means ... One of the most valuable books ever written.' 'Lewis, as always, sits down next to you and validates your grief like a true friend. He lets you rage, and cry, and even be furious with God, just as he did.''If you are grieving an enormous loss, you may find comfort here ... A great mind and wonderful writer who understands your grief well enough to put words to it.''His journal was also my journal as I worked through my own grief. Reading this book was actually comforting in that I knew that someone else understood my situation and offered insight and hope ... I highly recommend this book for anyone who has gone through the death of a loved one or who wants to comfort." 'This little book has had me in floods of tears [and] shows a real understanding of grief ... To read the words of this great man who shared and understood my pain and is a life affirming and faith affirming experience.'
£9.99
Faber & Faber A Rich Full Death
A Rich Full Death is a novel of poetry, murder and intrigue. Young Bostonian Robert Booth manoeuvres an entree into the residence of Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth in nineteenth-century Florence. When Mr Browning is called away, Booth follows him - and is brought to the village of his childhood sweetheart, who is now hanging by the neck from a tree in the garden...If you enjoyed A Rich Full Death you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, also by Michael Dibdin.
£9.08
Faber & Faber Caret
'Joyous.' Observer'Tremendously entertaining.' Irish Times 'Truly original.' The Times** A Times and Guardian Book of the Year **'We make lazy assumptions about the centre of things and its location. Who's to say that the centre of things isn't in a corner, way over there?''Nobody can be a person twenty-fours hours a day - it just can't be done. At night the sets dissolve and the performance falls away. We're off the books.'That's John Cromer talking, in this fresh instalment of his lifelong saga. For John, embarking on a new stage of life in 1970s Cambridge, charm and wit aren't just assets, they are survival skills. It may be a case of John against the world. If so, don't be in too much of a hurry to bet on the world.Conjuring a remarkable voice and mind, Caret is a feast of a novel, served on a succession of small plates, each portion providing an adult's daily intake of literary nourishment. Reading it - like any encounter with John Cromer -- is guaranteed to help you work, rest and play.'Thank god for John Cromer and his creator Adam Mars-Jones, one of the funniest, most self-aware characters in English fiction, whose minute observations on everything from constipation to lust are a source of unexpected delight.' Linda Grant
£22.50
Faber & Faber River: Poems by Ted Hughes
First published in 1983, River celebrates fluvial landscapes, their creatures and their regenerative powers.Inspired by Hughes's love of fishing and by his environmental activism, the poems are a deftly and passionatelyattentive chronicle of change over the course of the seasons. West Country rivers predominate ('The West Dart'and 'Torridge'), but other poems imagine or recall Japanese rivers or Celtic rivers, and 'The Gulkana' exploresan ancient Alaskan watercourse. At its core the sequence rehearses, in various settings, from winter to winter,the life-cycle of the salmon.All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,The epic poiseThat holds him so steady in his wounds, so loyal to his doom,so patientIn the machinery of heaven.from 'October Salmon'
£10.99
Faber & Faber The Book of Illusions
The Book of Illusions, written with breath-taking urgency and precision, plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, and the violent and the tender dissolve into one another. One man's obsession with the mysterious life of a silent film star takes him on a journey into a shadow-world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love. After losing his wife and young sons in a plane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in grief. Then, watching television one night, he stumbles upon a lost film by silent comedian Hector Mann, and remembers how to laugh . . .Mann was a comic genius, in trademark white suit and fluttering black moustache. But one morning in 1929 he walked out of his house and was never heard from again. Zimmer's obsession with Mann drives him to publish a study of his work; whereupon he receives a letter postmarked New Mexico, supposedly written by Mann's wife, and inviting him to visit the great Mann himself. Can Hector Mann be alive? Zimmer cannot decide - until a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever.'A nearly flawless work . . . Auster will be remembered as one of the great writers of our time.' San Francisco Chronicle 'Auster's elegant, finely calibrated The Book of Illusions is a haunting feat of intellectual gamesmanship.' TheNew York Times
£9.99
Faber & Faber The Brooklyn Follies
'I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I travelled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain . . .'So begins Paul Auster's remarkable new novel, The Brooklyn Follies. Set against the backdrop of the contested US election of 2000, it tells the story of Nathan and Tom, an uncle and nephew double-act. One in remission from lung cancer, divorced, and estranged from his only daughter, the other hiding away from his once-promising academic career, and, indeed, from life in general.Having accidentally ended up in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood, they discover a community teeming with life and passion. When Lucy, a little girl who refuses to speak, comes into their lives, there is suddenly a bridge from their pasts that offers them the possibility of redemption. Infused with character, mystery and humour, these lives intertwine and become bound together as Auster brilliantly explores the wider terrain of contemporary America - a crucible of broken dreams and of human folly. 'Auster at the top of his game. This superb novel about human folly turns out to be tremendously wise.' New Statesman
£9.99
Faber & Faber Leviathan
'Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin . . .'The explosion that detonates the narrative of Paul Auster's remarkable novel also ends the life of its hero, Benjamin Sachs, and brings two FBI agents to the home of one of Sachs's oldest friends, the writer Peter Aaron. What follows is Aaron's story, an intricate, subtle and gripping investigation of another man's life in all its richness and complexity. Combining an investigation of freedom and terrorism with all the tension, mystery and allusive richness familiar from Auster's The New York Trilogy or Sunset Park, Leviathan is an unmissable addition to the canon of 'one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers.' (Times Literary Supplement)'[A] Brownian motion experiment of a plot - chock-a-block with identity-swaps, sideways sweeps and lateral leaps.' Observer
£9.99
Faber & Faber Hundred Years War Vol 4: Cursed Kings
Cursed Kings tells the story of the destruction of France by the madness of its king and the greed and violence of his family. In the early fifteenth century, France had gone from being the strongest and most populous nation state of medieval Europe to suffering a complete internal collapse and a partial conquest by a foreign power. It had never happened before in the country's history - and it would not happen again until 1940.Into the void left by this domestic catastrophe, strode one of the most remarkable rulers of the age, Henry V of England, the victor of Agincourt, who conquered much of northern France before dying at the age of thirty-six, just two months before he would have become King of France.Following on from Divided Houses (winner of the Wolfson History Prize and shortlisted for the Hessel-Tiltman), Cursed Kings is the magisterial new chapter in 'one of the great historical works of our time' (Allan Massie).
£27.00
Faber & Faber Lord of the Flies: with an introduction by Stephen King
William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a dystopian classic: 'exciting, relevant and thought-provoking' (Stephen King). When a group of schoolboys are stranded on a desert island, what could go wrong?'One of my favorite books - I read it every couple of years.' (Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games)A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of schoolboys. By day, they discover fantastic wildlife and dazzling beaches, learning to survive; at night, they are haunted by nightmares of a primitive beast. Orphaned by society, it isn't long before their innocent childhood games devolve into a savage, murderous hunt ... 'Stands out mightily in my memory ... Such a strong statement about the human heart.' (Patricia Cornwell)'Terrifying and haunting.' (Kingsley Amis)'Beautifully written, tragic and provocative.' (E. M. Forster)ONE OF THE BBC'S ICONIC 'NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD'What readers are saying:'Every real human being should read this ... This is what we are.''It's brilliant, it's captivating, it's thought provoking and brutal and for some, its truly terrifying.''It can be read and re-read many times, and every time something new will appear.''There is a reason why this is studied at school ... Excellent read.''This is one of the few books I've read that I keep on my Kindle to read again.''I revisit this every few years and it's always fresh and impressive ... One of the best books I've ever read.'
£9.99
Faber & Faber My Name Is Red
The bestselling murder mystery from Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.Winner of the Nobel Prize for LiteratureWinner of the International IMPAC Dublin Award'Wonderful' The Spectator'Magnificent' Observer'Unforgettable' GuardianMy Name is Red is an unforgettable murder mystery, set amid the splendour of sixteenth century Istanbul, from the Nobel prizewinning authorIn the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day - in the European manner. At a time of violent fundamentalism, however, this is a dangerous proposition. Even the illustrious circle of artists are not allowed to know for whom they are working. But when one of the miniaturists is murdered, their Master has to seek outside help. Did the dead painter fall victim to professional rivalry, romantic jealousy or religious terror?With the Sultan demanding an answer within three days, perhaps the clue lies somewhere in the half-finished pictures . . . Orhan Pamuk is one of the world's leading contemporary novelists and in My Name is Red, he fashioned an unforgettable tale of suspense, and an artful meditation on love and deception.
£9.99
Faber & Faber Like Life
In this brilliant collection of stories Lorrie Moore addresses herself to a contemporary emotional dilemma - the widening gulf between men and women, and the simultaneous yearning for and fear of closeness.
£9.99
Faber & Faber The Anathemata
'The Anathemata can scarcely fail to be counted a great book... It does what Epic is meant to do. It gives a philosophic view, tenable for our times, of the secret places where nature finds reconciliation with the Divine.' The Listener'In Parenthesis is one of the enduring works that came out of the first world war. The Anathemata is more obviously a poem, in the sense in which Pound's Cantos is a poem. . . Both his books -- like his paintings -- have a thrice-distilled quality of finality and impersonality, like Gothic stone-carvings or the paintings on the walls of the Lascaux caves.' Kathleen Raine
£18.00
Faber & Faber How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks
We are the product of our evolutionary history and this history colours our everyday lives - from why we kiss to how religious we are. In How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Robin Dunbar explains how the distant past underpins our current behaviour, through the groundbreaking experiments that have changed the thinking of evolutionary biologists forever. He explains phenomena such as why 'Dunbar's Number' (150) is the maximum number of acquaintances you can have, why all babies are born premature and the science behind lonely hearts columns. Stimulating, provocative and highly enjoyable, this fascinating book is essential for understanding why humans behave as they do - what it is to be human.
£11.99
Faber & Faber Tusk Tusk
Come on troops. Let's take check: Finn Bar, slightly ruffled but still in fighting form. Maggie, could do with a full night's sleep but otherwise all in order... Stay here. Don't answer the door. I'll go out and get some proper food.In a new flat, three children play hide and seek. Eliot wears a crown, little Finn, King of the Wild Thing's, draws on the walls. Maggie climbs them. Hiding from the world, needing to be found, their one shared focus a mobile phone. Will it ring? Who will call? And what are they waiting for?Tusk Tusk is a tale of family loyalty as an uncertain future circles. Polly Stenham's second play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in March 2009.
£9.99
Faber & Faber The Equality Illusion: The Truth about Women and Men Today
In The Equality Illusion, 'the most influential young feminist in the country' (Guardian) and UK Feminista founder Kat Banyard argues passionately and articulately that feminism continues to be one of the most urgent and relevant social justice campaigns today. Women have made huge strides in equality over the last century. And yet:Women working full-time in the UK are paid on average 17% less an hour than men1 in 3 women worldwide has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused because of her genderOf parliamentary seats across the globe only 15% are held by women and fewer than 20% of UK MPs are women96% of executive directors of the UK's top hundred companies are menStructuring the book around a normal day, Banyard sets out the major issues for twenty-first century feminism, from work and education to sex, relationships and having children. She draws on her own campaigning experience as well as academic research and dozens of her own interviews. The book also includes information on how to get involved in grassroots action.
£10.99
Faber & Faber Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: A New Commentary
Shakespeare's Sonnets are as important and vital today as they were when first published four hundred years ago. Perhaps no collection of verse before or since has so captured the imagination of readers and lovers; certainly no poem has come under such intense critical scrutiny, and presented the reader with such a bewildering number of alternative interpretations. In this illuminating and often irreverent guide, Don Paterson offers a fresh and direct approach to the Sonnets, asking what they can still mean to the twenty-first century reader.In a series of fascinating and highly entertaining commentaries placed alongside the poems themselves, Don Paterson discusses the meaning, technique, hidden structure and feverish narrative of the Sonnets, as well as the difficulties they present for the modern reader. Most importantly, however, he looks at what they tell us about William Shakespeare the lover - and what they might still tell us about ourselves.
£15.29
Faber & Faber Murphy
Edited by J. C. C. Mays Murphy, Samuel Beckett's first novel, was published in 1938. Its work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphy's lovestruck fiancée Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure. Murphy's friends and familiars are simulacra of Murphy, fragmented and incomplete. But Beckett's achievement lies in the brilliantly original language used to communicate this vision of isolation and misunderstanding. The combination of particularity and absurdity gives Murphy's world its painful definition, but the sheer comic energy of Beckett's prose releases characters and readers alike into exuberance.
£9.99
Faber & Faber Wise Blood
Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's first novel, is the story of Hazel Motes who, released from the armed services, returns to the evangelical Deep South. There he begins a private battle against the religiosity of the community and in particular against Asa Hawkes, the 'blind' preacher, and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter. In desperation Hazel founds his own religion, 'The Church without Christ', and this extraordinary narrative moves towards its savage and macabre resolution. 'A literary talent that has about it the uniqueness of greatness.' Sunday Telegraph'No other major American writer of our century has constructed a fictional world so energetically and forthrightly charged by religious investigation.' The New Yorker'A genius.' New York Times
£9.99
Faber & Faber Hundred Years War Vol 3: Divided Houses
Divided Houses is a tale of contrasting fortunes. In the last decade of his reign Edward III, a senile, pathetic symbol of England's past conquests, was condemned to see them overrun by the armies of his enemies. When he died, in 1377, he was succeeded by a vulnerable child, who was destined to grow into a neurotic and unstable adult presiding over a divided nation. Meanwhile France entered upon one of the most glittering periods of her medieval history, years of power and ceremony, astonishing artistic creativity and famous warriors making their reputations as far afield as Naples, Hungary and North Africa. Contemporaries in both countries believed that they were living through memorable times: times of great wickedness and great achievement, of collective mediocrity but intense personal heroism, of extremes of wealth and poverty, fortune and failure. At a distance of six centuries, as Jonathan Sumption skilfully and meticulously shows, it is possible to agree with all of these judgments.
£27.00
Faber & Faber The War Poems
Siegfried Sassoon is one of the First World War poets whose poetry has defined a generation. He published most of his war poetry in The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack (1918). Chronologically ordered, the poems in this collection act as a timeline for the war, bringing to life the extraordinary experiences of soldiers in that conflict.
£12.99
Faber & Faber The Baklava Club
In nineteenth-century Istanbul, a Polish prince has been kidnapped. His assassination has been bungled and his captors have taken him to an unused farmhouse. Little do they realize that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who use the code name La Piuma (the Feather).Yashim is convinced that the prince is alive. But he has no idea where, or who La Piuma is - and has become dangerously distracted by falling in love. As he draws closer to the prince's whereabouts and to the true identity of La Piuma, Yashim finds himself in the most treacherous situation of his career: can he rescue the prince along with his romantic dreams?Jason Goodwin's bestselling 'Yashim' series has been published across the globe and received huge critical acclaim. In The Baklava Club, Goodwin takes Yashim on an adventure like no other, through the stylish, sensual world of Ottoman Istanbul.
£9.99
Faber & Faber The Penelopiad
As portrayed in Homer's Odyssey, Penelope - wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy - has become a symbol of wifely duty and devotion, enduring twenty years of waiting when her husband goes to fight in the Trojan War. As she fends off the attentions of a hundred greedy suitors, travelling minstrels regale her with news of Odysseus' epic adventures around the Mediterranean - slaying monsters and grappling with amorous goddesses. When Odysseus finally comes home, he kills her suitors and then, in an act that served as little more than a footnote in Homer's original story, inexplicably hangs Penelope's twelve maids.Now, Penelope and her chorus of wronged maids tell their side of the story in a new stage version by Margaret Atwood, adapted from her own wry, witty and wise novel.The Penelopiad premiered with the Royal Shakespeare Company in association with Canada's National Arts Centre at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in July 2007.
£10.99
Faber & Faber How We Live and Why We Die: the secret lives of cells
Cells are the basis of all life in the universe. Our bodies are made up of billions of them: an incredibly complex society that governs everything, from movement to memory and imagination. When we age, it is because our cells slow down; when we get ill, it is because our cells mutate or stop working.In How We Live and Why we Die, Wolpert provides a clear explanation of the science that underpins our lives. He explains how our bodies function and how we derived from a single cell - the embryo. He examines the science behind the topics that are much discussed but rarely understood - stem-cell research, cloning, DNA - and explains how all life evolved from just one cell. Lively and passionate, How We Live and Why we Die is an accessible guide to understanding the human body and, essentially, life itself.
£10.99
Faber & Faber The Prestige
Set in late 19th century London, the film tells of Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman), a popular American magician, with his British mentor Harry Cutter (Michael Caine) and girlfriend and assistant Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), who is in a friendly rivalry with Cockney magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). However, it soon turns into a jealous rivalry, as Rupert tries to discover the secrets of Alfred's success. It soon emerges though he may have real magical powers.
£10.99
Faber & Faber W. H. Auden Prose Volume 3 (1949-1955)
This is the fifth volume to be published in the ongoing complete edition of Auden's works, under the editorship of Edward Mendelson. It includes the essays, reviews, and other prose that Auden published or prepared for publication between 1949 -- when he wrote his first book of criticism, The Enchafèd Flood -- and December 1955, shortly before he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford and began the series of lectures that he published, with much else, in The Dyer's Hand.The texts throughout this edition are, wherever possible, newly edited from Auden's manuscripts, and the notes report variant readings from all published versions.
£36.00
Faber & Faber Another Time
Another Time was the first volume that Auden published after his departure to America with Christopher Isherwood in January 1939. It was dedicated to Chester Kallman. The poems, some of which date from the early thirties, are about people, places and the intellectual climate of the times, and they show greater variety of tone and technique than in any previous book of Auden's. Some of his most famous and often quoted (or misquoted) lines appear in their original form, including the text of two poems in particular - 'Spain 1937' and 'September 1,1939' - that he later altered or repudiated.'[He] has made himself into a kind of unofficial poet laureate. If I am bombed I hope he will write a few sapphics about me.' Stephen Spender, 1941
£10.99
Faber & Faber Catherine of Aragon: Henry's Spanish Queen
The image of Catherine of Aragon has always suffered in comparison to the heir-providing Jane Seymour or the vivacious eroticism of Anne Boleyn. But when Henry VIII married Catherine, she was an auburn-haired beauty in her twenties with a passion she had inherited from her parents, Isabella and Ferdinand, the joint-rulers of Spain who had driven the Moors from their country.This daughter of conquistadors showed the same steel and sense of command when organising the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Flodden and Henry was to learn, to his cost, that he had not met a tougher opponent on or off the battlefield when he tried to divorce her.Henry VIII introduced four remarkable women into the tumultuous flow of England's history: Catherine of Aragon and her daughter 'Bloody' Queen Mary; and Anne Boleyn and her daughter, the Virgin Queen Elizabeth. 'From this contest, between two mothers and two daughters, was born the religious passion and violence that inflamed England for centuries,' says David Starkey. Reformation, revolution and Tudor history would all have been vastly different without Catherine of Aragon.Giles Tremlett's new biography is the first in more than four decades to be dedicated entirely and uniquely to the tenacious woman whose marriage lasted twice as long as those of Henry's five other wives put together. It draws on fresh material from Spain to trace the dramatic events of her life through Catherine of Aragon's own eyes. 'Enthralling biography . . . this lively and richly detailed book . . . describing the queen's fierce battle to retain her crown, Tremlett brilliantly breathes life into the shadowy figure of a stubborn and finally heroic woman.' Daily Telegraph
£14.99
Faber & Faber Autumn Journal
Written between August and December 1938, Autumn Journal is still considered one of the most valuable and moving testaments of living through the thirties by a young writer. It is a record of the author's emotional and intellectual experience during those months, the trivia of everyday living set against the events of the world outside, the settlement in Munich and slow defeat in Spain.
£12.99
Faber & Faber Woods etc.
Woods etc. is Alice Oswald's third collection of poems, and follows the success of her widely acclaimed river-poem Dart, which was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002. Extending the concerns of Dart and written over a period of several years, these poems combine abrupt honesty with an exuberant rhetorical confidence, at times recalling the oral and anonymous tradition with which they share such affinity.
£12.99
Faber & Faber His Illegal Self
Seven-year-old Che was abandoned by his radical Havard-student parents during the upheaval of the 1960s, and since then has been raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother. He yearns to see or hear news of his famous outlaw parents, but his grandmother refuses to tell him anything.When a woman named Dial comes to collect Che, it seems his wish has come true: his mother has come back for him. But soon, they too are on the run, and Che is thrown into a world where nothing is what it seems.
£9.99
Faber & Faber Hav
Hav gives us Jan Morris at her most delightful and most suggestive. The city is a magical place - yet behind its arcane splendours are darker implications. The traditional Roof Race is peculiarly exciting, the waterfront is picturesque, the wistful call of a trumpeter from a distant rampart is wonderfully evocative, and every street corner is haunted by memories of illustrious visitors - Freud, Diaghilev, Marco Polo, Lawrence of Arabia and countless others. But Morris's visit ends in flight when an unidentified enemy arrives to seize control.When Jan Morris returns to Hav, some twenty years later, she finds that her account of her earlier visit is banned - and discovers a place that has rebuilt itself, transformed by a new energy and now dominated by a totemic tower 2000 feet tall. But as the old Hav was in many ways an allegory of the last century, so the city in its new incarnation offers no less elusive hints, echoes and portents of our 21st century world. As a destination it remains as entertaining as ever.
£10.99
Faber & Faber Sergey Prokofiev: Diaries 1915-1923: Behind the Mask
The second volume of Sergey Prokofiev's recently uncovered Diaries covers the years 1915 to 1922. It describes in detail the genesis and the problematic path to performance of major works in his canon, and the life-changing experiences of living in war-torn and revolutionary Russia, and deciding to leave for the mythic America he had long dreamed of visiting. The Diaries chart the author's swings of fortune, the loneliness of the émigré, his encounters with a luminous range of personalities from music, theatre, art and literature, and the search for love and friendship, all cast in the burnished prose of a born master, not just of music, but of words.
£36.00
Faber & Faber The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett
The present volume gathers all of Beckett's texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio.'He believes in the cadence, the comma, the bite of word on reality, whatever else he believes; and his devotion to them, he makes clear, is a sufficient focus for the reader's attention. In the modern history of literature he is a unique moral figure, not a dreamer of rose-gardens but a cultivator of what will grow in the waste land, who can make us see the exhilarating design that thorns and yucca share with whatever will grow anywhere.' - Hugh KennerContents: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, All That Fall, Acts Without Words, Krapp's Last Tape, Roughs for the Theatre, Embers, Roughs for the Radio, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio,...but the clouds..., A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht und Traume, What Where.
£17.99