Books published by Faber & Faber

The extraordinary group of Russian composers who came together in St Petersburg in the 1860s - long known as 'The Mighty Handful', but, as the moguchaya kuchka, better translated as 'the great little heap' - gave rise to one of the most fascinating and colourful stories in all musical history. Stephen Walsh, author of a major biography of their direct successor, Stravinsky, has written an absorbing account of Musorgsky and his circle - Borodin, Cui, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov. With little or no musical education they created works of lasting significance - Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade. Written with deep understanding and panache, The Kuchka, is highly engaging and a significant contribution to cultural history.

'I'm taking your eyes', he'd say, 'and keeping them safe.''I'm taking your ears and keeping them safe.'Ciara's father Mick kept her as his hidden treasure, making sure his only daughter was shielded from what he did and the men and women with whom he associated. Now Mick is dead and his legacy, so bound up in the landscape of Glasgow, that infamous no mean city, must be faced. As Ciara seeks to further the reputation of her art gallery, her world starts to fragment. Marked by the deep contradictions of her father, the art world and the place that made them all, she stands on a threshold. By confronting the past, her future blows wide open. Ciara by David Harrower premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2013.

All Over Ireland, edited by Deirdre Madden (Molly Fox's Birthday, Time Present and Time Past), continues the tradition of featuring the work of both new and established writers, including Colm Toibin, Mary Morrissy and Eoin McNamee. These diverse and accomplished stories, by turns dazzling, thoughtful and startling, bring new ideas and energy to the form and richly enhance the tradition of Irish fiction.

Fleeing a violent marriage, Olivia returns to her childhood home with her two young children and a broken arm. The house is imposing, surrounded by high walls and yew trees clipped into fantastical shapes, and her mother's rules create an atmosphere of brittle control. By coincidence, another couple are expected at the house at the same time: Olivia's brother Marcus and his wife Sophie are coming back from the hospital with their newborn. But Marcus and Sophie also bring along with them a tragic secret, a secret that will push the whole family towards breaking point...'Julia Leigh is one of the greatest living writers.' Simon Schama, Guardian Books of the Year'I loved it . . . A modern gothic classic.' Sarah Hall

Had an accident at work? Tripped on a paving slab? Cut yourself shaving? You could be entitled to compensation. Andrew and Barry at Scorpion Claims, Luton's finest personal injury lawyers, are the men for you. When Kevin, Andrew's high school nemesis, appears in his office the opportunity for a quick win arises. But just how fast does a lie have to spin before it gets out of control?Nick Payne's The Same Deep Water As Me premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in August 2013.

An epic, heart-wrenching follow-on from E. Nesbit's Five Children and It stories. The five children have grown up and World War I has begun in earnest. Cyril is off to fight, Anthea is at art college, Robert is a Cambridge scholar and Jane is at high school. The Lamb is the grown up age of 11, and he has a little sister, Edith, in tow. The sand fairy has become a creature of stories ... until, for the first time in 10 years, he suddenly reappears. The siblings are pleased to have something to take their minds off the war, but this time the Psammead is here for a reason, and his magic might have a more serious purpose. Before this last adventure ends, all will be changed, and the two younger children will have seen the Great War from every possible viewpoint - factory-workers, soldiers and sailors, nurses and ambulance drivers, and the people left at home, and the war's impact will be felt right at the heart of their family.

Best known for his provocative take on cultural issues in The Intellectuals and the Masses and What Good Are the Arts?, John Carey describes in this warm and funny memoir the events that formed him - an escape from the London blitz to an idyllic rural village, army service in Egypt, an open scholarship to Oxford and an academic career that saw him elected, age 40, to Oxford's oldest English Literature professorship.He frankly portrays the snobberies and rituals of 1950s Oxford, but also his inspiring meetings with writers and poets - Auden, Graves, Larkin, Heaney - and his forty-year stint as a lead book-reviewer for the Sunday Times.This is a book about the joys of reading - in effect, an informal introduction to the great works of English literature. But it is also about war and family, and how an unexpected background can give you the insight and the courage to say the unexpected thing.

March 1880, Limehouse. Kitty Peck, a spirited but vulnerable seventeen-year-old, is the reluctant heiress to Paradise, the criminal empire previously overseen by the formidable Lady Ginger. Far from the colour and camaraderie of the music hall where Kitty had been working, this newfound power brings with it isolation and uncertainty. Desperate to reconnect with Joey, her estranged brother, Kitty travels to Paris. Reunited at last, she is unable to refuse his request to take a child back to London. Within days of her return it's clear that someone has followed them... and this someone is determined to kill the child... and anyone who stands in their way.Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune is a fast-paced historical mystery with breath-taking twists and turns that takes us from the decadent, bohemian world of late 19th-Century Paris to a deadly secret at the heart of the British empire.

Felicito Yanaque has raised himself from poverty to ownership of a trucking business. His two sons work for him. He receives a threatening letter demanding protection money. The police don't take him seriously, Felicito refuses to pay up and gets sucked into a nightmare. He becomes a reluctant public hero. Then his mistress is kidnapped, and matters become seriously complicated. And he finds that his troubles have begun very close to home. His fate is interwoven with the story of Rigoberto, a wealthy Lima insurance executive. His boss and old friend, Ismael, suddenly announces that he is marrying his housekeeper, a chola from Piura, to the consternation of his twin sons, a pair of brutal wasters. Ismael escapes to Europe with his new bride, leaving Rigoberto to face the twins' threats, and their claims that he connived with a scheming woman to rob an old man of his fortune. Rigoberto is hounded by the press and TV. Meanwhile, his only son is having visions of a mysterious stranger who may or may not be the devil...

Originally published in 1985, four years after its author's untimely death, Love and Freedom is the unforgettable story of Rosemary Kavan, an Englishwoman whose marriage to a Czech led her to experience life in post-war Prague, from early optimistic years, through the nightmare of the Stalinist purges, up to the 'Prague Spring' and its aftermath. Her husband Pavel, a devoted communist, fell victim to the show-trials of the early 1950s and spent years in prison, dying soon after his release. Branded 'a traitor's wife', Rosemary struggled to support herself and her two sons. In the mid-1960s she became involved in the student reform movement, but the Russian invasion of 1968 came as a further cataclysm.'An outstanding memoir.' George Steiner'The story of a tragic disillusionment, political and personal, told with invincible humour.' Graham Greene'The overwhelming impression left by this book is one of warmth, true comradeship, courage and hope.' Timothy Garton Ash

Donkey Boy (1952) was the second entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlightspanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. It tells of Richard Maddison's first-born Phillip, nicknamed 'donkey boy' because his life was saved in infancy by being fed with ass's milk. The boy grows up in the Edwardian era, something of a misfit, at odds with his father. 'With extraordinary skill and precision [Williamson] rebuilds the scenery of the past... [he] seems to be engaged in a thriller whose instalments can be relied on to animate a whole section of social history.' Spectator'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

'Entertaining and rich in comedy . . . gripping and moving.' William TrevorSister Judith Clancy is told that she must leave the protection of her convent and return to her family. So begins the unravelling of community ties which form this brilliant and devastating story of human and political relations in twentieth-century Ireland. Past and present, memory, madness and buried trauma shift in a disturbing kaleidoscope as four generations of the O'Malleys and Clanceys attempt to come to terms with the after-effects of the Irish Civil War.No Country for Young Men was nominated for the Booker Prize.'One of the very best books of its kind that it has ever been my pain and pleasure to read.' Guardian'A book to be bought and read and thought about.' Irish Times

This atmospheric and heartfelt story is one of Betsy Byars' best-loved classics.'And then, this afternoon,' Uncle Fred said to me, 'you and I'll go after the fox.'Tom, a town boy, is horrified when his parents tell him he has to stay on Aunt Millie's farm while they are away. He finds country life every bit as strange and uncomfortable as he feared. But soon, he discovers a rare black fox with green eyes, living with her cubs in the forest. Suddenly, the aummer is full of excitement. That is, until Uncle Fred decides to go after the fox - will Tom save her and her family in time?

Through a selection of letters to friends and literary peers, Dai Greatcoat presents a rare insight into the life of the poet and artist David Jones and in so doing offers an autobiographical portrait of the author in his own words.

'The only remarkable thing people can tell of their doings these days is that they have stayed at home', declared George Eliot in 1869. In Victorian and Edwardian Britain travel became the rage. The middle classes and the aristocracy seemed in a constant flux of arrival and departure, their luggage festooned with foreign labels. The revolution in transport made this possible. The Mediterranean Passion describes how the British travelled to the South and where they went. Drawing on what these travellers wrote, and what was written for them, it enriches our understanding of the Victorians and Edwardians by exploring the medical, religious, sexual and aesthetic dimensions of their journeys and illuminates an important but neglected aspect of British social and cultural history.'... combines scholarship with charm ... It could easily be taken to the Mediterranean on a holiday and read with pleasure on a sunny beach or in the shade of a church.' Asa Briggs, Financial Times 'I was impressed not merely by the range of his erudition - historical, cultural, literary, topographical, medical et al. - and by the depth of his enquiries into his subject but by the subtlety and refinement of his prose. He deals with very elusive, complex and culturally contradictory matters, upon which few, if any, could arrive at persuasive generalisations; yet he does so throughout the book, while his conclusion is a marvel of judgment, excelling even what his preceded.' David Selbourne (author of The Principle of Duty) The Mediterranean Passion was the joint winner of the 1987 Wolfson Literary Award for History.

In this, the sequel to Slow Boats to China (also reissued in Faber Finds), Gavin Young tells, with equal panache, of his return voyage from the China Seas to England, via the South Seas, Cape Horn and West Africa.'I am decidedly envious of Gavin Young and his Slow Boats Home, successor to his highly entertaining Slow Boats to China . . . a fascinating, memorable book.' Eric Newby, Guardian 'Like Slow Boats to China this is likely to become a classic of travel.' Francis King, Spectator

How Dear is Life (1954) was the fourth entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. It finds Phillip Maddison in the portentous months leading to the outbreak of war in 1914.Now a clerk in the Moon Fire Office, Phillip decides to join the territorials - attracted by the money, the camp near the sea, and the prospect of a new suit of clothes. As a glorious summer slips away war seems unreal; but the old world is in peril, and before long the British Expeditionary Force is setting sail for France.'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

"e;This is an unpretentious book, but it brings out with unusual clearness the dilemma that faces every official in an empire like our own."e; George OrwellTrials in Burma recounts Maurice Collis' experiences as a district magistrate in Rangoon in the late 1920s. The book recounts his gradual realisation that far from administering an impartial system of justice, he is expected to protect British interests. In a cool dispassionate style, Collis describes how, by choosing integrity over career, he eventually loses his job."e;A brilliant, direct and extraordinarily vivid account of this troubled period...a masterly survey of the Burmese scene."e; Daily Mail

Set in a near future (the novel was first published in 1961 and is set in the period 1970-73), this is Angus Wilson's most allegorical novel, about a doomed attempt to set up a reserve for wild animals. Simon Carter, secretary of the London Zoo, has accepted responsibility and power to the prejudice of his gifts as a naturalist. But power is more than just the complicated game played by the old men at the zoo in the satirical first half of this novel: it lies very near to violence, and in the second half real life inexorably turns to fantasy - the fantasy of war.This tense and at times brutal story offers the healing relationship between man and the natural world as a solution for the power dilemma.

The Dark Lantern (1951) was the first of Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlightspanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. In it we meet Richard Maddison, a countryman working in London as a City clerk, struggling to make do on a few shillings a week. He falls for Hetty Turner, youngest daughter of a prosperous merchant, but her father rates Richard an unsuitable suitor.'There is magic in Henry Williamson's novel . . . which raises it right out of the family saga class. The magic is of the steam train age of South London which is so lovingly described.' John Betjeman, Daily Telegraph 'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Killed at Arras in 1917, Edward Thomas left behind him a short, vivid history of his own early life, covering the period from his birth to his entry into St Paul's. Though a fragment, in many senses it is far more: in the words of its author 'no less than an autobiography . . . an attempt to put down on paper what [this author] sees when he thinks of himself from 1878 to about 1895'. The Childhood of Edward Thomas was not published until 1938, over two decades after Thomas originally showed the manuscript to a publisher. Those eventual publishers, Faber & Faber, were building on their release two years earlier of Thomas's Collected Poems, for which he was becoming best known.This edition includes Edward Thomas's 'War Diary,' a record of the last three months of his life when, as an elderly - at thirty-eight - subaltern he fought among the misery of the trenches. To witness Thomas's childhood memoir and wartime diaries in such close proximity is to have a moving incarnation of his distinctive voice, its clarity and - even in war - its unfailing attention to his fellow-creatures.

'Beautiful, lyrical, sensitive and meaningful . . . It deserves to be read and re-read.' Los Angeles Times Two deadly enemies - a young Arab rebel and a Jewish runaway - meet in a remote valley to begin a quest. Both have been taught since infancy to hate; to attack for self-defence. But something incredible is happening to them, something that not even the fierce shelling of the Six-Day War can intrude upon. For they are on a fantastic mission, a mission both believe has been set for them by God . . . Gripping, exciting and incredibly poignant, Smith's Gazelle is an intriguing thriller from a master of the genre.

Jaroslav Hasek is best known for his satirical masterpiece The Good Soldier Svejk. That has been described as 'Perhaps the funniest novel ever written.' Although his life was short and chaotic, Hasek did however write more as this volume tellingly reveals. In his preface, Cecil Parrott, translator and biographer of Hasek, crisply defines its purpose.. 'All the world has heard of Svejk, but few are familiar with the countless other characters Hasek created in his stories and sketches, which together with his feuilletons and articles are though to number some twelve hundred. The best of these deserve to be made available to the Western public and are included in this volume.' The range is wide. There is a selection from his Bugulma stories (Hasek as Bolshevik and Red Commissar), some early Svejk stories, reminiscences of Hasek's apprenticeship days, and the hilariously funny speeches made by Hasek when promoting his political 'Party of Moderate Progress within the bounds of the Law'.

A Test to Destruction (1960) was the eighth entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. It begins in the final year of the Great War. After the harsh winter of 1917 everyone is nearing the limits of their endurance. Hetty, temporarily relieved to have Phillip safely home, hopes desperately that her son will not be posted to France again. Phillip, however, is determined to go back, and adds his name to a list of those available for service. After returning to the Front, however, he is injured and sent on convalescent leave in the West Country, where his post-war civilian life begins.'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Love and the Loveless (1958) was the seventh entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. The year covered by this novel, 1917, was perhaps the darkest of the Great War, with widespread mutinies in the French Army after the disastrous Nivelle offensive. Phillip Maddison is now a young transport officer, tending pack animals, surviving amid devastation and death. His courage, sustained by poetry, by comradeship, by the comfort of whisky and water, is perhaps unnatural; but amid the charnel house of battle he endures, in a way of life so alien to those at home that it might be the dark side of the moon. 'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

The Golden Virgin (1957) was the sixth entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. Its action unfolds in 1916, the year of the Somme. As war destroys the countryside Phillip Maddison loves, turning it into an inferno of mud and terror, the damaged figure of the Mother of God with her Babe on a ruined church inspires the legend that war will end only when she, the Golden Virgin, topples into the ruins below. Invalided home once again Phillip re-crosses the narrow waters of the Channel to find life continuing as before, albeit with an ever-widening gulf between those at home and those who have 'returned.''Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Horace Walpole, famous for his novel The Castle of Otranto and his gothick castle-villa, Strawberry Hill, has been oddly shielded by his previous admirers. The most famous of these was W. S. Lewis, a rich American scholar, who collected virtually all of Walpole's surviving letters and papers and edited them in forty-eight impressive volumes. He was however a conventional man of his times and could not bring himself to acknowledge Walpole's homosexuality and its implications. R. W. Ketton-Cremer, who wrote what was otherwise a very good biography of Walpole, was similarly evasive. Timothy Mowl's study of Horace Walpole is the first to give a complete and convincing picture of the whole man. It is the first to show that, despite his aristocratic connections (he was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first Prime Minister) Horace Walpole was a sexual and social outsider whose talents as a publicist were used to serve his own agenda. Also revealed for the first time is Walpole's passionate affair with the 9th Earl of Lincoln. The ending of that relationship, and Walpole's subsequent resentment of Lincoln's relatives, affected his judgment, friendships and emotions for the rest of his life.This book provides an honest and radical reassessment of one of the most influential men of taste of the eighteenth-century, and is reissued to coincide with a major Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition dedicated to Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill.'This is a lively, provocative and hugely entertaining book. Whatever one makes of Dr Mowl's interpretation of Walpole's career, it is always intelligently argued, and presented with a polemical vigour and sense of style which are worthy of his subject's own.' John Adamson, Sunday Review'. . . he is lively and convincing on the gradual accretions to Strawberry Hill, and often shrewd on the character of his subject . . .' Pat Rogers, Times Literary Supplement'In general, Mowl writes delightfully, and there are witticisms that Horry (Horace Walpole) himself would relish.' Bevis Hillier, The Spectator'In this vivid and entertaining biography, Horace Walpole is properly outed.' Duncan Sprott, Gay Times'. . .he presents the most credible picture of the man and his achievement to date.' Martin Postle, Apollo'This wicked, enjoyable book should provoke wide debate.' David Watkin, Evening Standard

Lady Diana Cooper's autobiography covers the years from her earliest childhood (as Lady Diana Manners, youngest daughter of the eighth Duke of Rutland) to retirement at Chantilly and the death of her husband Duff Cooper, first Viscount Norwich, politician, writer and, at the end of the Second World War, British Ambassador in Paris. The three books which make up this single volume were published in 1958-60 and met with outstanding critical and public success. Reviewing the first of them, Evelyn Waugh wrote: 'This is not to be judged merely as the memoirs of an exceptionally brilliant social figure, but as a work of art. By that standard it has real distinction - poetic, idiosyncratic, poignant, funny, unflagging, scintillating, simple, stylish; not the book of the season, or of the bedside table; a book for the library, to be read and reread and loved for a lifetime'.

Reverend Septimus Treloar, retired as Chief Inspector of the CID after thirty years service, is now country parson of the seemingly sleepy St. Mary's Danedyke. But the rural calm of his and the villagers' lives are thrown into chaos when mysterious happenings cause them to suspect the haunting of a fabled ghost within the dark recesses of their church. But can this really be a case of supernatural spirits? Or are Septimus's suspicions of thieving mischief closer to the truth? If so, what could be the object of all this criminal plotting? Septimus must use his detective know-how to find the answers on a mission that will lead him to the secret of The Danedyke Cup, a silver gilt relic supposedly once belonging to Our Lady...The first in Stephen Chance's classic series about Reverend Septimus, 'the one and only beatified bobby,' Septimus and the Danedyke Mystery (1971) has everything: treasure hunts, ancient clues, rollicking humour and quick-witted suspense. It has been described by Philip Ardagh in the Guardian as 'truly marvellous.'

I'm done, Father,Keep your crown,I swear you'll never bring me down!I am not queen material!Once, in opposing kingdoms lived a princess and a prince who had lost their mothers. Althea, unable to cry, became light with grief and floated, and so was locked away. Digby, so heavy-hearted that he could never smile, one day declares war. Althea, forced out of hiding, escapes, only to encounter the solemn prince on contested land and the warring heirs begin a passionate affair. But for Althea to find real love, she must first face her own deepest fears.