Books published by Faber & Faber

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities.

Don't disturb the dead. On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax - despite the beaches, the cafes and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife.

Music can carry the stories of history like a message in a bottle.Lord Kitchener, Neneh Cherry, Smiley Culture, Stormzy . . . Groundbreaking musicians whose songs have changed the world. But how? This exhilarating playlist tracks some of the key shifts in modern British history, and explores the emotional impact of 28 songs and the artists who performed them.This book redefines British history, the Empire and postcolonialism, and will invite you to think again about the narratives and key moments in history that you have been taught up to now.Thrilling, urgent, entertaining and thought-provoking, this beautifully illustrated companion to modern black music is a revelation and a delight.

The first poem in Gottfried Benn's first book, Morgue (1912) - written in an hour, published in a week, and notorious ever after, or so the poet claimed - with its scandalous closing image of an aster sewn into a corpse by a playful medical student, set him on his celebrated path. And indeed, mortality, flowers, and powerful aesthetic collisions typify much of Benn's subsequent work. Over decades, as he suffered the vicissitudes of an often hostile fate - the death of his mother from untreated cancer; the death of his first wife Edith in 1922; his brief but disastrous attempt to ingratiate himself with the Nazis in 1933, followed by their persecution of him; the suicide of his second wife Herta in 1945, afraid she would fall into the hands of the Russians - the harsh, sometimes callous voice of the poems relented, softened, and mellowed. The later Benn - from which Impromptus is chiefly drawn, many of the poems translated into English for the first time - is deeply affecting: the routines and sorrows and meditations of an intelligent, pessimistic, and experienced man. Written in what T. S. Eliot called the 'third voice' of poetry, the low un-upholstered monologue of the poet talking to himself, these poems are slender ribbons of speech on the naked edge of song and silence. With this new collection of poems selected and translated by Michael Hofmann, Gottfired Benn, at long last, promises to attain in English the presence and importance that he so richly deserves.

Stories that are full of hope and courage brimming with positivity as an antidote to the at times challenging world we live in. >>With stories from: Ann Jungman, Emma Carroll, Kate Saunders, Kieran Larwood, Claire Barker, Natasha Farrant, Pip Jones, Martyn Ford, Lou Kuenzler, Ingrid Persaud, Lucy Farfort, Reba Khatun, Aisha Bushby, Ayesha Braganza, Rashmi Sirdeshpande, Michael Mann and Hannah Lee.

The third volume of William Golding's Sea TrilogyA decrepit warship sails on the last stretch of its voyage to Sydney Cove. It has been blown off course and battered by wind, storm and ice. Little but rope holds the disintegrating hull together. And after a risky operation to reset its foremast, an unseen fire begins to smoulder below decks.

The second volume of William Golding's Sea TrilogyIn a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, f,te-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull. The sequel to Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, the second volume in Golding's acclaimed sea trilogy, is imbued with his extraordinary sense of menace. Half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium, everyone on this leaky, unsound hulk is 'going to pieces'. And in a nightmarish climax the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship begins to come apart at the seams.

The first volume of William Golding's Sea Trilogy.Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, Edmund Talbot keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back in England. Full of wit and disdain, he records the mounting tensions on the ancient, sinking warship where officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the cramped spaces below decks. Then a single passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a 'hell of degradation', where shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself.

This dramatic meeting of minds has us questioning who is the more delusional - doctor or patient: like other victims in this exhilarating new collection, Marguerite may initially appear vanquished, but a closer look reveals how little of herself she has really surrendered.

It is 00:00 and the full of the night yet to come. A man sits at a window through the dead hours of night, his sleep broken by troubling dreams of a figure in a white landscape. He is a man afflicted by personal loss, but also a man of his time, all too aware of the troubled world in which he lives.

From bestselling author and winner of the Blue Peter Book Award, this is the sixth adventure set in the world of Podkin One-Ear.

The first comprehensive biography of this undervalued writer, who was considered 'far and away the best living woman poet' in her day.'An exquisitely told account of the life of a half-forgotten London poet whose work was admired by Hardy, Sassoon and Virginia Woolf. Julia Copus does her justice at last.' Claire Tomalin'This Rare Spirit is a classic - the biography of Mew we have all been waiting for.' Fiona BensonThe British poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was regarded as one of the best poets of her age by fellow writers, including Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sasson, Walter de la Mare and Marianne Moore. She has since been neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again, all the more since her 150th anniversary in 2019. This is the first comprehensive biography, from cradle to grave, and is written by fellow poet Julia Copus, who recently unveiled a blue plaque on Mew's childhood house in Doughty Street and was the editor of the Selected Poetry and Prose (2019).Mew was a curious mix of New Woman and stalwart Victorian. Her poems speak to us strongly today, in these strangely mixed times of exposure and seclusion: they reveal the private agony of an isolated being who was forced to keep secret the tragedies of her personal life while being at the same time propelled by her work into the public arena. Her poetry transfigures that very private suffering into art that has a universal resonance.

Can one broken heart heal another?Wesley Cunningham has come home from the War with more wounds than he can count. What he wants now is a quiet life - and he's fallen in love with his beautiful, fiercly intelligent neighbour Beth Hardy.But Beth's own battles have just begun. Determined to change the world, her committment and ideals will extract a heavy toll. Through it all, Wes will not stop loving her. This is the story of their journey through the catastrophic mid-twentieth century to find a way of being together.

Unexhausted Time inhabits a world of dream and dawn, in which thoughts touch us 'like soft rain', and all the elements are brought closer in.Feelings, messages, symbols, visions . . . Emily Berry's latest collection takes shape in the half-light between the real and the imagined, where everything is lost and yet 'nothing goes away'. Here life's innumerable impressions, moods, seasons and deja vus collect and disarrange themselves, while a glowing, companionable 'I' travels the mind's landscapes in hope of refuge and transformation amid these displaced moments in time. Whether one reads Unexhausted Time as a long poem to step into or a series of titled and untitled fragments to pick up and cherish, the work is healing and inspiring, always asking how we might harness the power of naming without losing life's 'magic unknownness'. By offering these intangible encounters, Emily Berry more truly presents 'what being alive is'.'Emily Berry has a refreshingly free, not to say incendiary, approach to poetry.' Observer

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds, a 'funny and rewarding' (Publishers Weekly) coming-of-age novel about friendship and loyalty across neighbourhood lines and the hardship of life for an urban teen.A lot of the stuff that gives my neighbourhood a bad name, I don't really mess with. The guns and drugs and all that, not really my thing.Nah, not his thing. Ali's got enough going on, between school and boxing and helping out at home. His best friend Noodles, though. Now there's a dude looking for trouble - and, somehow, it's always Ali around to pick up the pieces. But, hey, a guy's gotta look out for his boys, right? Besides, it's all small potatoes; it's not like anyone's getting hurt.And then there's Needles. Needles is Noodles's brother. He's got a syndrome, and gets these ticks and blurts out the wildest, craziest things. It's cool, though: everyone on their street knows he doesn't mean anything by it.Yeah, it's cool . . . until Ali and Noodles and Needles find themselves somewhere they never expected to be . . . somewhere they never should've been - where the people aren't so friendly, and even less forgiving.'A funny and rewarding read.' Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review'Urban fiction with heart . . . unexpectedly gorgeous.' Booklist'Moving and thought-provoking . . . defies readers' expectations.' Kirkus

It's not easy being the WORST at everything!Hack and Whack are the very worst Vikings in the village - until a fierce and stinky berserker moves in - NEXT DOOR!WILL the brand new school help the twins outwit this villain and his vicious dog, Muddy Butt?And will Twisty Pants, Dirty Ulf and Elsa Gold-Hair help vanquish this foul fiend?

An unusually brilliant generation of film-makers emerged from British television drama in the 1960-70s - none more formidable than Alan Clarke.

These letters throw light on a more complex figure. Whether addressing his literary friends, who included Barbara Pym, Kingsley Amis and John Betjeman, or those less prominently placed, Larkin shows himself to be a frank and generous letter-writer.

'Like Robert Macfarlane re-written by Cormac McCarthy.' Telegraph'Beckett doing Beowulf.' London Review of Books One thousand years from now, the sole inhabitants of a small island - a group no larger than an extended family - are living in a post-civilised world.

Whether you're just a bit nosy, or you want to launch a full-scale investigation of your neighbours, this indispensable handbook will teach you everything you need to know.

Frank only wanted three things this year- to perform stand-up comedy, go to therapy, and to keep his house plants alive. Then Giorgio got hit by a bus. As Frank moves in with Giorgio to help him recover, he begins to suspect that the perfect life Giorgio has been sharing online may be nothing more than a web of lies and scams.

The third son of a coalminer, David Storey takes us from his tough upbringing in Wakefield, to being 'sold' to Leeds Rugby League Club, to his escape to the Slade School of Art and his life in post-war London.

Described as 'a rich, reverberative dance with memories of a haunted city' (LA Times), the poems of the prize-winning debut Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, draw on archetype, myth and Russian literary figures. Tightly realised domestic settings are invigorated with a contemporary relevance, humour and torment, and a distinctive, transcendent music. 'With his magical style in English, Kaminsky's poems in Dancing in Odessa seem like a literary counterpart to Chagall in which laws of gravity have been suspended and colors reassigned, but only to make everyday reality that much more indelible. His imagination is so transformative that we respond with equal measures of grief and exhilaration.' The American Academy of Arts and Letters'Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky tops the list because he is one of those rarest of finds in this or any century, a writer who establishes what poetry can be.' The New York Times

Introduced by Carmen Maria Machado, the radical dystopian classic, lost for forty years: in a nightmarish Britain, THEY are coming closer.'A creepily prescient tale ... Insidiously horrifying!' Margaret AtwoodDeft, dread filled, hypnotic and hopeful. Completely got under my skin.' Kiran Millwood Hargrave'A masterpiece of creeping dread.' Emily St. John Mandel'Crystalline ... The signature of an enchantress.' Edna O'Brien'Lush, hypnotic, compulsive ... A reminder of where groupthink leads.' Eimear McBride'A masterwork of English pastoral horror: eerie and bewitching.' Claire-Louise Bennett'I'm pretty wild about this paranoid, terrifying 1977 masterpiece.' Lauren GroffThis is Britain: but not as we know it. THEY are coming closer . . .THEY begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. Soon the National Gallery is purged; eerie towers survey the coast; savage mobs stalk the countryside destroying artworks - and those who resist.THEY capture dissidents - writers, painters, musicians, even the unmarried and childless - in military sweeps, 'curing' these subversives of individual identity.Survivors gather together as cultural refugees, preserving their crafts, creating, loving and remembering. But THEY make it easier to forget ...Lost for over forty years, Kay Dick's They (1977) is a rediscovered dystopian masterpiece of art under attack: a cry from the soul against censorship, a radical celebration of non-conformity - and a warning.