Books published by Faber & Faber

Oliver is eighteen and wants to enjoy himself before going to university. But this is the 1920s and he lives in Stilbourne, a small English country town where everyone knows what everyone else is getting up to, and where love, lust and rebellion are closely followed by revenge and embarrassment.

Fame, success, fortune, a drink problem slipping over the edge into alcoholism, a dead marriage, the incurable itches of middle-aged lust. For Wilfred Barclay, novelist, the final unbearable irritation is Professor Rick L. Tucker, implacable in his determination to become The Barclay Man. Locked in a lethal relationship they stumble across Europe, shedding wives, self-respect and illusions. The climax of their odyssey, when it comes, is as inevitable as it is unexpected.

The three short novels in this collection, The Scorpion God, show Golding at his playful, ironic and mysterious best. In 'The Scorpion God' we see the world of ancient Egypt at the time of the earliest Pharaohs. 'Clonk Clonk' is a graphic account of a crippled youth's triumph over his tormentors in a primitive matriarchal society. And 'Envoy Extraordinary' is a tale of Imperial Rome where the emperor loves his illegitimate grandson more than his own arrogant, loutish heir.

In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment of this transformation - penned by none other than the Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who is not only one of our finest novelists but one of the keenest social critics at work today.Taking his cues from T. S. Eliot - whose treatise Notes Towards the Definition of Culture is a touchstone precisely because the culture Eliot aimed to describe has since vanished - Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men and women of letters drove political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate.But Vargas Llosa stubbornly refuses to fade into the background. He is not content to merely sign a petition; he will not bite his tongue. A necessary provocateur, here vividly translated by John King, provides an impassioned and essential critique of our time and culture.

Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War Two, he is taken as a prisoner-of-war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell transfigured from his ordeal, and begins to realise what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. But did those accumulated choices also begin to deprive him of his free will.

In particular, it was the years during which he and his sister looked after their mother that shaped the writer we know so well: a number of poems written over this time are for her, and the mood of pain, shadow and despondency that characterises his later verse draws its strength from his experience of the long, lonely years of her senility.

"A vast treasury of ideas, observations and innovation." - Francis Ford Coppola The triple-Oscar winner of the Godfather films, Apocalypse Now and The English Patient presents a masterclass on movies and how they are made.Highly lauded film editor, director, writer and sound designer Walter Murch reflects on the six decades of cinematic history he has been a considerable contributor to - and on what makes great films great.Together with Francis Coppola and George Lucas, Murch abandoned Hollywood in 1969 and moved to San Francisco to create the Zoetrope studio. Their vision was of a new kind of cinema for a new generation of film-goers. Murch's subsequent contributions in film editing rooms and sound-mixing theatres were responsible for ground-breaking technical and creative innovations.In this book, Murch invites readers on a voyage of discovery through film, with a mixture of personal stories, meditations on his own creative tactics and strategies, and reminiscences from working on The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, Lucas' American Graffiti, and Anthony Minghella's The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley.Suddenly Something Clicked is a book that will change the way you watch movies.

A master of elegy and eulogy who finds during lockdown the space to take stock. Many of the poems in The Missing Months occupy the strange hiatus afforded by lockdown. They look forward as well as back, toying with possible futures, enthused by utopian dreams or fearing cultural and bodily entropy. They celebrate and mourn the lives of friends and relatives, captivated by carefully tended images from the past. Lockdown's 'missing months' in the world of a four-year-old granddaughter are laid down and remembered for her. Familiar objects - a park bench, stones, grass, stars, windows - are reanimated. This poetry of imaginative journeying 'stretches/Banks on a slope of air and turns' like the heron it watches. Between the crackle of radio signals and rain, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam and the American singer Miranda Lambert, here is a poet in search of points of reference, the 'bright fresh leaves' of sunlight among the ruins.

Indiana Bones is back for a second dogtastic detective escapade!Once again he and his bestest friend, Aisha, have to gather their wits, courage and plenty of snacks to sniff out clues and solve a twisty mystery.Still on the hunt for the Avenger's lost treasure, the intrepid travellers set off on another trek, this time to the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. But nothing is ever simple for our heroes, and the slippery Serpent and stinky Ringo are still hot on their tails, determined to thwart their every move.An irresistible comical adventure.'Funny and clever . . . A heartfelt adventure story.' Kirkus

But as Stephen Walsh - author of the highly praised Debussy: A Painter in Sound - points out in this intensely absorbing study, there is infinitely more to romantic music than meets the eye.

I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me.Agnes Grey is forced to become a governess due to her family's circumstances, but struggles with the reality of disobedient children, disdainful employers and an isolated existence. Written from Anne's experience, this is a truly personal and moving coming-of-age story.

In their fifth thrilling adventure, the explorers journey deep into the Bubble Ocean on their quest to stop the evil Collector, but time is running out . . .The Poison Tentacle Sea was home to the powerful Bone Current. As they had feared, it gave a sudden surge and pulled them in.Half-mermaid Ursula Jellyfin has always longed for adventure, and this time the stakes are higher than ever. The Collector is holding a group of children prisoner on Pirate Island, and it's up to Ursula and her friends Jai, Max and Genie to set them free. Armed with a magical mermaid trident, and with new recruit Zara the pirate fairy on board, their mission is filled with danger. The explorers must face zombie skeletons, make a daring rescue from a whirlpool and travel through a dinosaur graveyard. But even if they do make it to Pirate Island, can they fool the Collector and get in to an impenetrable fort?Fast-paced, magical storytelling in a breathtaking underwater world. Alex Bell's inventiveness and attention to detail is a joy to read.Praise for the series:'A magical adventure of friendship, bravery and derring-do in a richly imagined world.' The Bookseller'A fantastic frosty adventure.' Sunday Express'Wintry, atmospheric, highly imaginative fantasy.' Metro'The most huggable book of the year . . . An (iced) gem.' SFX

Far District, the transporting debut from the author of House of Lords and Commons, is structured as the spiritual journey of a poet-speaker caught between two cultures. As childhood memory is grafted to the world of imagination - shaped by books, art, music and travel - the two come together to develop a new vision of what 'home' might offer.'Far District is a classic, which is to say a rare and exemplary first book. This book is striking for the way Ishion Hutchinson's gorgeously textured language - shanty-zinc, asthmatic whirl, poincianas - stretches over far-reaching narratives of landscape and culture. With an ear "e;tuned to the blue above and below"e; he captures the physical rhythms of his native Jamaica as well as the broader, metaphysical rhythms of distance and displacement, "e;of [travelling] the narrow bridge separating"e; past and present.' PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry'At once biography and autobiography, generous with its thinking and observations . . . the poems are urgent, authentic, deeply felt, and beautifully shaped. It is rare to find such achievement in a first collection, where an author writes from a place of humility in the face of literary tradition. His work possesses high artistic merit; his love of world literature suffuses his lines and spurs his ambition. This collection is a true work of alchemy.' Whiting Awards

I'm a killer I told youI told you that all alongYou were the dummy to believeI could ever be anything elseTwo teenagers fall in love on Long Island. There's fun and dancing, sports and team spirit, there's the woods and beer and physical hard work. But it's 1938, the world is on the brink of war, and their wholesome summer camp is exclusively for American youth of German descent. As their mutual attraction deepens, so they become intoxicated by the Nazi ideology that fuels the camp, an ideology that will culminate in global atrocity and genocide.Inspired by the real Camp Siegfried, Bess Wohl's play premiered at the Old Vic Theatre, London, in September 2021.

The spellbinding stories of the scientists whose eureka! breakthroughs in modern physics reveal science's astonishing predictive power.'An excellent popular science book.'DARA O BRIAIN'A thoroughly informative and entertaining read.'ANNA BURNS, Booker Prize-winning author of Milkman'One of the best-written books about phsyics I have ever come across.'POPULAR SCIENCE'Highly entertaining and accessible.' IRISH TIMES'Fascinating, life enhancing entertainment.' PROSPECT'Thoroughly enjoyable . . . Chown has down it again.' BBC SKY AT NIGHTBreakthrough takes us on a breathtaking, mind-altering tour of the eureka! moments of modern physics. Charting the spellbinding stories of the scientists who predicted and discovered the existence of unknown planets, black holes, invisible force fields, ripples in the fabric of space-time, unsuspected subatomic particles and even antimatter, Marcus Chown reveals science's greatest mystery: its astonishing predictive power.***Breakthrough was previously published in 2020 in hardback under the title The Magicians.

This volume covers the production of Eliot's play The Family Reunion; the publication of The Idea of a Christian Society; and the joyous versifying of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. After exhausting himself through nights of fire-watching in the London wartime blackout, he travels the country, attends meetings of The Moot, delivers talks, and advises a fresh generation of writers including Cyril Connolly, Keith Douglas, Kathleen Raine and Vernon Watkins. Major correspondents include W. H. Auden, George Barker, William Empson, Geoffrey Faber, John Hayward, James Laughlin, Hope Mirrlees, Mervyn Peake, Ezra Pound, Michael Roberts, Stephen Spender, Tambimuttu, Allen Tate, Michael Tippett, Charles Williams and Virginia Woolf. Four Quartets, Eliot's culminating masterpiece, is discussed in detail.

Alone in a cube that's glowing in the darkness, X is content within its little universe of infinite thought. This solitude is disturbed by the appearance of Y, who insists on exposing X to the richness of the physical world. Each begins to long for what the other has, luring them into a strange loop.In this play for two variables, Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould use mathematics and theatre to navigate the furthest reaches of our world. Through a series of surreal episodes, X and Y tackle some of life's greatest questions: where did the universe come from, does time have an end, do we have free will?I is a Strange Loop was first performed by the authors at the Barbican Pit, London, in March 2019.'I is a Strange Loop is a play that plays... with ideas, concepts, abstractions and relationships that are, usually, hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals, articulating the ineffable, incarnating the incorporeal, revealing the inconceivable... it makes us feel we know a great deal more than we do.... and is also very funny, utterly compelling and marvellously human.' Simon McBurney

Big Brother is watching you . . .Under the all-seeing eye of Big Brother, Winston Smith spends his days in the Ministry of Truth, rewriting the past for the Party. Despite constant surveillance and the ever-present threat of repression, he starts to inwardly question the regime. A note from a colleague - 'I love you' - marks the beginning of a secret affair that breaks all the rules. But what will happen when they are found out?This classic dystopian novel is a vision of life under a totalitarian regime, where every thought or action could bring the Thought Police to the door . . .Now with a stunningly sinister cover by Nathan Burton.

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) was one of the best-loved English poets of the twentieth century, his verse admired by contemporaries including Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot. This volume presents a new selection of de la Mare's finest poems, including perennial favourites such as 'Napoleon', 'Fare Well' and 'The Listeners', for a twenty-first-century audience. The poems are accompanied by commentaries by William Wootten, which build up a portrait of de la Mare's life, loves and friendships with the likes of Hardy, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas and Katherine Mansfield. They also point out the fascinating references to literature, folklore and the natural world that embroider the verse.

Indiana Bones is a shaggy dog with a difference. He's got superpowers and can sniff out criminals and - with his young friend and owner Aisha - solve mysteries that would flummox the world's more expert detectives!In their first case, they are on the trail of treasure hidden centuries ago by a legendary knight known as The Lonely Avenger, an adventure which takes them all the way to Egypt and the pyramids.A hugely inventive new series from one of the funniest author/illustrator teams in the business.

The perfect coming-of-age romance by the most spectacularly funny and original debut voice.My name is Ellie. Ellie Pillai . . . And I suppose I am a little bit weird, but then, aren't we all, just a little bit?Most days, Ellie Pillai is somewhere between invisible, and not very cool - and usually she's okay with that. But suddenly, Ellie feels different. Maybe it's the new boy at school who makes her brain explode into rainbows every time she sees him (and also happens to be going out with her best friend), or maybe it's her new drama teacher, the one who seems to have noticed she exists. Suddenly, her misfit style, her skin colour, her songwriting and all that getting lost in the music in her head seem to be okay too. Because maybe standing out isn't a bad thing after all.'I adored this.' Simon James Green, author of Alex in Wonderland'I loved the fresh and original voice.' Bookseller, Highlights of the Season'A hilarious and heart-warming story.' Aisha Bushby, author of A Pocketful of Stars'Warm, funny and hopeful.' A M Dassu, author of Boy, Everywhere'A fresh, funny, feel-good story.' Rashmi Sirdeshpande

A revelatory and vibrant story of measurement which will make you look at the world around you anew.'A wildly ambitious book by a formidably talented young writer.'ROBERT MACFARLANE'Vivid, epic, and full of curiosities. This is a book to delight and fascinate.'TIM HARFORD, author of How to Make the World Add Up'Beyond Measure offers, with much intellectual flair and style, a bracing new history: how the once innocent urge to quantification took over our lives, our sense of ourselves and the world.'PANKAJ MISHRA'The exact value of this book is hard to quantify. Weighty, precise and satisfyingly obsessive, it's also an absolute pleasure to read.'SIMON GARFIELD, bestselling author of The TimekeepersWe measure rainfall and radiation, the depths of space and the emptiness of atoms, calories and steps, happiness and pain. But how did measurement become ubiquitous in modern life? When did humanity first take up scales and rulers, and why does this practice hold authority over so many aspects of our lives?Written with vim and dazzling intelligence, James Vincent provides a fresh and original perspective on human history as he tracks our long search for dependable truths in a chaotic universe. Full of mavericks and visionaries, adventure and the unexpected, Beyond Measure shows that measurement has not only made the world we live in, it has made us too.'An epic story about humankind's relationship with the physical world. Vincent is an erudite and perceptive guide, who with energy and skill weaves history, science and reportage into an enthralling tale.'ALEX BELLOS'Absolutely fascinating . . . vivid, charming and masterly.'AMELIA HORGAN, author of Lost in Work'Delightful . . . one of those books that makes us look afresh at the whole of modern civilisation.'GRAHAM FARMELO, author of The Universe Speaks in Numbers'I adored this provacative book.'SUE PRIDEAUX, author of I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche