Sebastian Faulks

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A genuinely thought-provoking piece of fiction' THE TIMES'Extraordinary' WILLIAM BOYD'Profoundly moving . . . a wonderful and life-affirming love story' JAMES HOLLAND'His greatest novel yet' ANTONY BEEVOR'Original and enthralling' PETER JAMES‘A beautifully written novel. On the one hand you have love, kindness, responsibility; on the other monstrous arrogance and indifference to consequences’ SCOTSMANA CHILD WILL BE BORN WHO WILL CHANGE EVERYTHINGWhen a young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman's child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences. Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, which they hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it. Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention. The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. It asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should? Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power.

"Cunningly crafted. . . . France's unquiet histories are brought to life by a master storyteller." --Financial Times (UK)A story of resistance, complicity, and an unlikely, transformative friendship, set in Paris, from internationally bestselling novelist Sebastian Faulks. American historian Hannah intends to immerse herself in World War II research in Paris, wary of paying much attention to the city where a youthful misadventure once left her dejected. But a chance encounter with Tariq, a Moroccan teenager whose visions of the City of Lights as a world of opportunity and rebirth starkly contrast with her own, disrupts her plan. Hannah agrees to take Tariq in as a lodger, forming an unexpected connection with the young man. Yet as Tariq begins to assimilate into the country he risked his life to enter, he realizes that its dark past and current ills are far more complicated than he'd anticipated. And Hannah, diving deeper into her work on women's lives in Nazi-occupied Paris, uncovers a shocking piece of history that threatens to dismantle her core beliefs. Soon they each must question which sacrifices are worth their happiness and what, if anything, the tumultuous past century can teach them about the future. From the sweltering streets of Tangier to deep beneath Paris via the Metro, from the affecting recorded accounts of women in German-occupied France and into the future through our hopes for these characters, Paris Echo offers a tough and poignant story of injustices and dreams.

In this unique and compelling anthology, Sebastian Faulks and Jorg Hensgen have collected the best fiction about war in the twentieth century. Ranging from the First World War to the Gulf War, these stories depict a soldier's experience from call-up, battle and comradeship, to leave, hospital and trauma in later life.

Sixteen-year-old Jacques Rebi re is living a humble life in rural France, studying butterflies and frogs by candlelight in his bedroom. Across the Channel, in England, the playful Thomas Midwinter, also sixteen, is enjoying a life of ease-and is resigned to follow his father's wishes and pursue a career in medicine. A fateful seaside meeting four years later sets the two young men on a profound course of friendship and discovery; they will become pioneers in the burgeoning field of psychiatry. But when a female patient at the doctors' Austrian sanatorium becomes dangerously ill, the two men's conflicting diagnosis threatens to divide them--and to undermine all their professional achievements. From the bestselling author of Birdsong comes this masterful novel that ventures to answer challenging questions of consciousness and science, and what it means to be human.

Philip Deval, a soldier recently returned from the beaches of Normandy, arrives in Palestine on a peace-keeping mission in the final days of the British Mandate. The Sea of Galilee glitters in the distance as war-weary troops marvel at the novelty of oranges and sun - a paradise that belies a fierce new conflict about to erupt. Some years later, Philip begins work teaching at a school in the English countryside and meets the enigmatic music mistress, Frances Darwood. Over long evenings spent listening to records in her music room, they grow close. But Philip is a changed man, and must confront the secrets and scars of all he has lived through - which threaten, even now, to upend his future. Farewell to Eden is a sweeping and profound novel about faith in all its forms, and a rich portrait of an embattled post-war Britain. It asks the question: how, after great suffering, do we retain our humanity, learn to love again, and believe in the promise of a better life?

'A wise and heartfelt piece of writing' THE TIMES 'Witty' INDEPENDENT 'Wry and reflective . . . a soulful look at a life in words' i PAPER ‘A wonderful portrait of an age, and of a writer’ RORY STEWART, author of Politics on the Edge ‘Utterly fascinating’ DAVID KYNASTON, author of A Northern Wind *** 'Shot through with the kind of depth and detail that can only come from a masterful writer finally turning his pen to his own life. Fresh, wise and finely-wrought' ALICE WINN, author of In Memoriam ‘As charming and funny in schoolboy episodes as he is thought-provoking in the darker environs of mental health, Sebastian Faulks is always resonant, civilised and sane’ MARK KNOPFLER In Fires Which Burned Brightly, Faulks, a reluctant memoirist, offers readers a series of detailed snapshots from a life in progress. They include a post-war rural childhood – ‘cold mutton and wet washing on a rack over the range’ – the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and a career as one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists. There are not one, but two daring escapes from boarding school; the delirium of a jetlagged American book tour; the writing of Birdsong in his brother’s house in 1992; and memorable trips across the channel to France. Politics, psychiatry and frustrated ventures into the world of entertainment are analysed with patience and rueful humour. The book is driven by a desire ‘to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ It ends with a tribute to Faulks’s parents and a sense of how his own generation was shaped by the disruptive power of war and its aftermath. Sharply perceptive and alive with a generous wit, Fires Which Burned Brightly is a work of subtle yet profound intelligence and warmth. PRAISE FOR SEBASTIAN FAULKS 'Faulks writes with great emotional authority' SUNDAY TIMES 'A prodigiously talented writer' NEW YORK TIMES 'Faulks is beyond doubt a master' FINANCIAL TIMES 'The most impressive novelist of his generation' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

A new work of memoir from bestselling novelist Sebastian FaulksIn Fires Which Burned Brightly, Faulks, a reluctant memoirist, offers readers a series of detailed snapshots from a life in progress. They include a post-war rural childhood – ‘cold mutton and wet washing on a rack over the range’ – the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and a career as one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists. There are not one, but two daring escapes from boarding school; the delirium of a jetlagged American book tour; the writing of Birdsong in his brother’s house in 1992; and memorable trips across the channel to France. Politics, psychiatry and frustrated ventures into the world of entertainment are analysed with patience and rueful humour. The book is driven by a desire ‘to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ It ends with a tribute to Faulks’s parents and a sense of how his own generation was shaped by the disruptive power of war and its aftermath. Sharply perceptive and alive with a generous wit, Fires Which Burned Brightly is a work of subtle yet profound intelligence and warmth.

Widely acclaimed as the greatest war novel of all time, this classic tale of a young German soldier's harrowing experiences in the trenches of World War I is the basis for an Academy Award-winning film. With an introduction by bestselling author Sebastian Faulks. When twenty-year-old Paul B umer and his classmates enlist in the German army during World War I, they are full of youthful enthusiam. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught to believe in shatters under the first brutal bombardment in the trenches. Through the ensuing years of horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another. Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel not only portrays in vivid detail the combatants' physical and mental trauma, but dramatizes as well the tragic detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home. Remarque's stated intention--"to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war"--remains as powerful and relevant as ever, a century after that conflict's end.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Shocking and enlightening... touching and affecting' DAILY MAIL'A masterpiece . . . one of the great novels of this or any other century' INDEPENDENTAs young boys, both Jacques Rebière and Thomas Midwinter become fascinated with trying to understand the human mind. As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa. As the concerns of the old century fade and the First World War divides Europe, the two men's volatile relationship develops and changes, but is always tempered by one exceptional woman; Thomas's sister Sonia.'Structurally intricate, yet intensely focused on the lives of individuals . . . replete with interesting ideas and . . . exceptionally fine writing' OBSERVER'A bold and remarkable work of imagination . . . to write so well for so many pages is an amazing feat of intellectual athleticism' SUNDAY TELEGRAPHSebastian Faulks, Sunday Times bestseller, September 2023

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Faulks's most poignant love story yet' ANTONY BEEVOR1914: Aspiring journalist Anton arrives in Vienna where he meets Delphine, a woman of deep secrets. Anton is entranced by the light of first love, until his country declares war on hers.1927: For Lena, life in a small town has been harsh and cold. When her love affair with a young lawyer crumbles, she leaves to take a post at a remote snow-capped sanatorium.1933: Anton is sent to write about the same clinic, the mysterious Schloss Seeblick. In this place, on the banks of a silvery lake where the roots of human suffering are laid bare, two people will see each other as if for the first time.‘A magnificent, moving novel’ INDEPENDENT‘Faulks on his best form’ TELEGRAPH

'Genuinely thought-provoking’ THE TIMES'Extraordinary' WILLIAM BOYD‘Faulks is an enviably graceful and economical writer’ GUARDIANA CHILD WILL BE BORN WHO WILL CHANGE EVERYTHINGTech billionaire Lukas Parn has an ambitious plan. Behind the doors of the IVF clinic in his London institute, a daring switch is made. Young academic Talissa Adam believes she is simply carrying a child for a grateful family, but the baby inside her is different from any living human. The boy, Seth, grows up unaware, though his parents not that he’s different: he can’t make plans, is unaware of danger and seems to have at least one extra sense. But as Seth becomes a man, the truth about him is revealed and the world starts to hunt him down.‘ [An] unsettling book from one of our most popular novelists; it’s also one of his best’ FINANCIAL TIMES‘His greatest novel yet' ANTONY BEEVOR'Profoundly moving . . . a wonderful and life-affirming love story' JAMES HOLLAND'Original and enthralling' PETER JAMES

'Superb' OBSERVER'Cunningly crafted' FINANCIAL TIMES'Faulks is doing what he does best’ SUNDAY TIMESIn the depths of the archive, Hannah dances with the ghosts of Vichy France, lost in testimony and a desire to hear the voices of the past. Back in her apartment, Moroccan teenager Tariq crashes on her sofa, consumed by his search for the mother he barely knew. Their excavations will unearth rich histories that will teach them both just how much the future is worth fighting for. Paris Echo is a propulsive and haunting novel of empire and identity, told with biting wit and tenderness, which exposes the shadows of the city of lights.‘[Paris Echo] is brimming with Faulks’s deep affection for Paris . . . and ambition to evoke that place, its ghostliness, those spectres of history, lurking around every beautiful avenue’ GUARDIAN

'Profound . . . Faulks evokes a deep compassion' OBSERVER'Does what a good novel should - it unsettles, it moves, and it forces us to question who we are' SUNDAY TIMES'A delight . . . moving and exciting' DAILY TELEGRAPH Five lives overlap across two centuries. School teacher Geoffrey’s war takes him to the brink of sanity; Billy’s fortitude lifts him from the Victorian slums in London; Elena and Jeanne interrogate the notion of the soul, from opposite points of view, a century apart. And for Anya, a young American singer-songwriter, only her producer Jack can understand the depths of their bond as art and life collide. In a symphony of fiction, A Possible Life defies the boundaries of the novel, to explore the deepest questions of how we are connected to one another.'A Possible Life is more than the sum of its parts . . . the stories acquire power as resonances between them accrete. Only at the end do you realise you've been won over by their quiet, glinting virtuosity' THE TIMES

‘A masterpiece’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ‘Ambitious, demanding and profoundly melancholy’ GUARDIANDr. Robert Hendricks has just received a mysterious invitation. Psychiatrist Alexander Pereira has asked him to stay at his villa on a French island. But what starts out as an intellectual exchange soon becomes a cat and mouse game that brings to the surface a history of war and a lost love that Hendricks had thought buried. A gripping exploration of the mysteries of memory, Where My Heart Used to Beat is a stunning and thrilling novel of past lives and the indelible scars of love. ‘An intelligent and moving examination of the traumas of war’ SCOTSMAN‘Will leave you gulping back sobs’ OBSERVER

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Compelling . . . Faulks has become an international sensation' GUARDIAN'Performs like an elegant melody' OBSERVER'Tense and affecting . . . A modern epic' SPECTATORLife at the British Embassy in Washington in 1959 is awash with parties, martinis, jazz, and for Mary van der Linden, the kind of happiness she has always dreamt of. With her diplomat husband Charlie busy and the children off at boarding school, she feels listless until news reporter Frank Renzo enters their lives. And when Frank and Mary begin a torrid affair, their passion will force an impossible decision. Set between Washington, New York and Moscow, On Green Dolphin Street, is a masterful exploration of Cold War chaos, and devastating love.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Ambitious and beautifully crafted' THE TIMES'Faulks writes with great emotional authority' SUNDAY TIMESAmidst the letters of the alphabet, a life reveals itself. Flashing backwards and forwards through time, we meet Pietro Russell. As a photographer in Sri Lanka, a schoolboy in Fulham and even before he was born to his wounded English father and young Italian mother. The extraordinary moments of Pietro's life are navigated with unique imagination, giving the reader a chance to view a life from a new and moving vantage point. A Fool's Alphabet is a novel of true invention from a master storyteller that sees life in all of its compelling, poignant glory.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Vivid . . . engagingly lucid and disarmingly funny' GUARDIAN'Beautifully done . . . witty and poignant' THE TIMES'Brilliant' OBSERVERWelcome to Mike Engleby's world. Deep in the hallowed halls of an esteemed English university, Mike is one of the only working-class boys, amongst the privileged masses. He's also different, starkly so, but able to observe it all. But observation soon tips into obsession when his fixation, fellow student Jennifer, goes missing. What has Mike Engleby overlooked? A cult classic and an exemplar of the campus novel, Engleby is a beguiling portrait of an outsider, told in an unforgettable voice.'Remarkable . . . intensely exhilarating' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'A tour-de-force . . . a great novel' DAILY MAIL'Compelling, disturbing and significant' SCOTSMAN

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Compelling and stunningly written' THE TIMES'Wildly exciting . . . a classic' SPECTATOR'Flawless . . . poetic . . . superbly portrayed' DAILY TELEGRAPH Three men. Three short, glittering lives. Young English painter Christopher Wood arrives in Paris in 1921 set on becoming the next great master. By day he studies; by night he attends parties with Picasso and Cocteau before paying too high a price for success. Richard Hilary, a confident if unprincipled Spitfire pilot, is suffering from terrible burns after being shot down. But the operations to restore him haven't deterred him from returning to action. And Jeremy Wolfenden, the cleverest of his set at All Souls College, leaves it all behind to report on the Cold War. But his louche private life makes him a plaything for the intelligent services, taking him on a fateful journey between East and West. The Fatal Englishman is a stunning tale of three short lives that burned brightly from a master storyteller.