Sebastian Faulks Novels

Birdsong- Set before and during the great war, "Birdsong" captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. His life goes through a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself.

Charlotte Gray, a haunting story of love and war set in London and occupied France in 1942-3, is loosely a sequel. Charlotte is a highly educated young Scottish woman who falls passionately in love with an airman, Peter Gregory, emotionally scarred by his many close brushes with death. When he disappears on a mission to France, she follows him as a British secret courier, sent over to help support the Resistance. Having failed to find Gregory, she decides to stay on to do what she can for the France she has loved since childhood. She and the reader are drawn ever deeper into the lives of assimilated French Jews-- the children Andre and Jacob whose parents have already been sent to the death camps, and the Levades, father and son. Though ultimately powerless to help, Charlotte nevertheless learns a far deeper understanding of herself and her own family through them.

Devil May Care - 'Vintage Bond' The Times 'Everything a thriller should be' Front Row, Radio 4 'Races along ... gets better and better' Economist 'Smart and enjoyable' Guardian 'The read of the summer' Sunday Times

Human Traces- 'It is of a Russian novelist, Tolstoy, that one finds oneself thinking while reading Human Traces - something about the novel's lovely but unnerving mixture of epic grandeur and shattering personal simplicity; the burning, idealistic engagement with the human condition of its principal characters; and the infinitely touching courage of their attempts to make a difference. This is a bold and remarkable work of imagination' - Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph * 'An erudite and lyrical exposition of early psychiatry which is as illuminating as a floodlight in the dark... Human Traces improves on all its predecessors in its scale, its complexity and its scholarship' - Independent on Sunday * 'Faulks emerges as a writer with muscle, with affinities to the great Europeans: Thomas Mann, Balzac, Stendhal... But Faulks has not jettisoned his novelist's instincts and what gives Human Traces its pathos and power is the sense of our abiding frailty before life's intransigent mysteries and the dimness of our rational understanding' - Sally Vickers, The Times * 'Shocking and enlightening... Faulks has a great ability to meld scientific theory with human drama... Its ambition is admirable; its entertainment value... is equally undeniable' - Philip Hoare, Daily Mail"

A week in December- London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days, we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and, a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it - and party on as though tomorrow is a dream. Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this intensely realised group of people, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they
inhabit.

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