Books published by Faber & Faber

An epic, life-spanning tale of friendship, music, and the moments that change a person forever.

In early March 2020 Liverpool were two wins away from an extraordinary achievement, on course for their first league title win in 30 years - since the heads days of Kenny Dalglish - and likely to seal it in the Liverpool derby against their great rivals Everton.

'Riveting and revelatory.' Philip Pullman'Wonderfully vivid and touching.' Literary Review'Warm, wise and unflinching.' Sunday Times'Witty and heartfelt.' Financial TimesStephen Hough is indisputably one of the world's leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards. Enough recounts his unconventional coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in an unmusical home in Cheshire to the main stage of the Carnegie Hall in New York, aged just twenty-one. 'Hough writes like a dream, with an almost Alan Bennett-like eye and ear for the sights and sounds of childhood.' Dan Cairns, Sunday Times'A memoir that is by turn audacious, harrowing, joyous, moving and funny . . . Hough [has a] brilliant ear for language, for rhythm, for silence.' Harriet Smith, Gramophone'An endearingly humorous, entrancingly lyrical writer.' Peter Conrad, Observer'Most memoirs give me far more than I want to know - this is the rare sort that left me urgently demanding a second volume, a third, a fourth. I loved it.' Philip Pullman

Triple-Oscar-winning, world-renowned animator - and author of the seminal book The Animator's Survival Kit - Richard Williams' legendary career in the world of animation is brought to the page here for the first time. Written with his wife and collaborator, Imogen Sutton, Adventures in Animation follows the life and career of this pivotal figure in animated features, from the influential moment when, aged five, Williams saw Snow White, right through his career of more than sixty years. Over those decades, Williams created full-length features, short films, title sequences for films and hundreds of commercials - all of which were graced by his characteristically elegant, sinuous lines and magnificent imagination. Williams' place in animation history is assured: he directed the Academy Award-winning 1971 adaptation of A Christmas Carol and perhaps most famously worked as Director of Animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for which he won two Academy Awards. Serving as the linkman between the original creators of the world of Disney (Snow White, Dumbo, The Jungle Book) and the current generation of digital animators (Toy Story, The Incredibles and Ice Age), it is fair to say that his like will not be seen again. Williams' first book, The Animator's Survival Kit, and the masterclasses he ran, saw him pass on his hard-won craft to future generations of animators. In Adventures in Animation, the story of the man behind the images will inspire them all over again, bringing more animators and fans of animation to the life and work of this master of the artform.

A groundbreaking reassessment of W. H. Auden's early life and poetry, shedding new light on his artistic development as well as on his shifting beliefs about political belonging in interwar England. From his first poems in 1922 to the publication of his landmark collection On This Island in the mid-1930s, W. H. Auden wrestled with the meaning of Englishness. His early works are prized for their psychological depth, yet Nicholas Jenkins argues that they are political poems as well, illuminating Auden's intuitions about a key aspect of modern experience: national identity. Two historical forces, in particular, haunted the poet: the catastrophe of World War I and the subsequent "rediscovery" of England's rural landscapes by artists and intellectuals. The Island presents a new picture of Auden, the poet and the man, as he explored a genteel, lyrical form of nationalism during these years. His poems reflect on a world in ruins, while cultivating visions of England as a beautiful-if morally compromised-haven. They also reflect aspects of Auden's personal search for belonging-from his complex relationship with his father to his negotiation of the codes that structured gay life. Yet as Europe veered toward a second immolation, Auden began to realise that poetic myths centred on English identity held little potential. He left the country in 1936 for what became an almost lifelong expatriation, convinced that his role as the voice of Englishness had become an empty one. Re-examining one of the twentieth century's most controversial poets, The Island is a fresh account of his early works and a striking parable about the politics of modernism. Auden's preoccupations with the vicissitudes of war, the trials of love, and the problems of identity are of their time. Yet they still resonate profoundly today. 'Nicholas Jenkins is one of our most perceptive and resourceful critics. In this wonderful study of the early Auden, he brings to bear history, biography, and an acute sense of the artistic moment to fashion for us a young genius who is conservative, bucolic, gay, a patriotic adherent of post-imperial Little England. Most people work backwards from a writer's ultimate reputation, but Jenkins gives us a new, unexpected image of a poet developing in the aftermath of World War I and the collapse of modernism.'Edmund White, author of The Humble Lover'The Island is a Copernican Revolution in Auden studies, a revelatory and often exciting book that presents a new and convincing account of Auden's early years. It explores, for the first time, the deep connections between the inner workings of his poems and the worlds of politics and economics. By bringing to light Auden's ambition to be a national poet, Jenkins transforms our understanding of not only Auden himself but all of modernist literature.'Edward Mendelson, author of Early Auden and Later Auden

Jamie McKendrick's Drypoint depicts the turbulent present with incisive detail while often taking us back to an equally conflictual Biblical or classical world. Acute and stoical in tone, these poems transport us by bus or ferry or ghostly Rolls Royce to the cobbled streets of Ferrara, the once-Greek port of Smyrna, the bombed acres of Liverpool and Mariupol, and to places not to be found on any map, places where 'North was south, being lost like this'. Like his 'immigrant muntjac' the poet disregards walls and fences and breaks through 'the borders of our ruled enclosures'. The presence of translations from poets ancient and modern is another example of the way space and time are here collapsed and reconfigured in a language rich with associations, historical and vernacular.

Mrs Sarah Siddons, acclaimed as the greatest actress of all time, holds complete sway over audiences and critics alike. Sick of being cast as tragic, wounded mothers, Siddons decides it's time to harness her star power and become the leading lady of her own life.

Legendarily reticent, perverse and misleading, Prince is one of the few remaining 80s superstars who still, perhaps, remains unexplained. Now a firm fixture in the pop canon, where such classics as 'Purple Rain', 'Sign o' the Times' and 'Parade' regularly feature in Best Ever Album polls, Prince is still, as he ever was, an enigma. His live performances are legendary (21 Nights at the O2 in 2007) and while recent releases have been modestly successful at best, his influence on urban music, and R'n'B in particular, has never been more evident. The Minneapolis Sound can now be heard everywhere. Matt Thorne's Prince, through years of research and interviews with ex-Revolution members such as Wendy and Lisa, is an account of a pop maverick whose experiments with rock, funk, techno and jazz revolutionised pop. With reference to every song, released and unreleased, over 35 years of recording, Prince will stand for years to come as the go-to book on the Great Man.

The arrival of a blistering debut voice in international literature, and a radical work of literary fiction-poetic, provocative, artful and singular. In a deserted village, an unnamed young man waits for an opportunity to escape.

It exemplifies Marina Carr's work: storytelling that pushes the boundaries of love, power and desire. Draw coal. A Landmark Productions and Abbey Theatre co-production, it opened at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in February 2024.

'An astounding debut . . . a book that seduces the brain . . . Millner's couplets enact high-wire acts of wit and poignancy.' New York Times'I've never read a better encapsulation of what it means to question a previously fixed idea of identity and selfhood.' Vogue'Millner's ultimate achievement is to draw open the distance . . .between the self that one takes as given and the self, no less true, that one cannot help but make.' New Yorker'Millner is brilliant at showing how early moments of lust can be existentially unmooring. . . Couplets is deft, delicate and unexpectedly fun.' Guardian'Maggie Millner's Couplets absolutely blew me away. Breathing new life into that most familiar of poetic forms, she recounts the difficulties inherent in making ourselves vulnerable to another person with precision and guile.' James Conor Patterson, Poetry Society, Books of the YearMaggie Millner's electrifying debut is a coming-of-age love story, a story of coming out and a story of coming apart. A woman in her late twenties leaves a long-term relationship with a boyfriend for another woman. The affair thrusts her from an outwardly conventional life into queerness, polyamory, kink, and unalloyed, consuming desire. Written in rhyming couplets with disarming frankness, what ensues is an exploration of obsession, gender, identity-making, sexual experiment, and the art and act of literary transformation.

'Britain's equivalent to Patricia Highsmith, Celia Fremlin wrote psychological thrillers that changed the landscape of crime fiction for ever: her novels are domestic, subtle, penetrating - and quite horribly chilling.' Andrew TaylorAppointment with Yesterday (1972), Celia Fremlin's eighth novel, concerns a woman who calls herself Milly Barnes. But this is not her real name - for 'Milly' is on the run, driven by her terrible panic that at any moment the remorseless arm of the law will catch up with her. 'Not less horrible than illicit deaths are the horrors that lurk in female domesticity, and Celia Fremlin has long been the mistress of their fictional presentation. Here, in the best so far of her always good books, she has fused both, in an excellent terror novel.' TLS

The title needs explaining. Why back? We haven't been there yet! In 1939 the same team of Maurice Gorham (text) and Edward Ardizzone (illustrations) published The Local. Like so many books of that time it had a short life, all the remaining stock being destroyed in the Blitz. After the war, they decided to do a new edition with a revised text and redrawn, in some cases completely new, illustrations. It is this book, Back to the Local, first published in 1949, that Faber Finds is reissuing. Prepare yourself for the most delightful of nostalgic rambles around the pubs of London in the late 1940s. Text and illustrations are in perfect harmony as we are introduced to The Regulars, Barmaids Old and New, as we venture into The Saloon Lounge, The Saloon Bar, The Public Bar and squeeze into The Jug-And-Bottle Bar. We visit The Mews Pub, The Wine-House, the Riverside Pub and The Irish House. These are all chapter headings and eloquently testify to what awaits you. Treat yourself to a memorable pub crawl!

The most improbable, fascinating and endlessly entertaining sporting facts and stories, from prehistory to the present day.

A passionate memoir exploring classical music, its restorative qualities and wider cultural influence by the celebrated Music Director of the Royal Opera House.Sir Antonio Pappano is one of the best known and most celebrated conductors alive today. His deeply held belief in the power of music to inspire and enlighten is the motivation behind this long anticipated memoir.>In 1969, decades before he was chosen to conduct the music at the Coronation of King Charles, Sir Antonio Pappano was a ten-year-old boy accompanying his father's singing lessons. My Life in Music tells the moving tale of a legendary conductor who, nurtured in childhood by his parents and their dedicated work ethic, goes on to conduct at many of the most influential opera houses of Europe and North America. Pappano skilfully evokes an extensive selection from his wide-ranging repertoire - operas and orchestral works spanning from Mozart to Birtwistle and Mark Anthony Turnage, as well as art song and chamber music works in which he has performed as a pianist - and makes a compelling case for the potential classical music has to captivate new and wider audiences.

Kofi is back in a brand-new, music-making adventure - a debut fiction series from one of the most prominent educators and music radio talk host. His whole world was the sound of the speakers, the records, and the fun he was having in this place that he never even knew existed.

A unique memoir of a lifetime's friendships - from one of Britain's most beloved literary companions.

Was it revulsion I felt? . Like many before her - none of whom have returned - she's determined to snuff out the horrors within. But could she ever be prepared for what hides within its turrets; . . Emily Carroll's hair-raising tale, charged with eroticism, won't just make your skin crawl - it will crawl underneath it.

'One of the most original and audacious autobiographies ever written by a writer.' Le Monde Hand to Mouth tells the story of the young Paul Auster's struggle to stay afloat. By turns poignant and comic, Auster's memoir is essentially a book about money - and what it means not to have it. From one odd job to the next, from one failed scheme to another, Auster investigates his own stubborn compulsion to make art and, in the process, treats us to a series of remarkable adventures and unforgettable encounters. The book ends with three of the longest footnotes in literary history: a card game, a thriller about baseball, and three short plays. Hand to Mouth is essential reading for anyone interested in Paul Auster, in the figure of the struggling artist, in the nature of poverty, or in baseball.