Showing results by publisher "Faber & Faber" in All Categories

Standing one evening at the window of her house by the sea, Anne Quirk sees a rabbit disappearing in the snow. Nobody remembers her now, but this elderly woman was in her youth a pioneer of British documentary photography. Her beloved grandson, Luke, now a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers, is on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, part of a convoy taking equipment to the electricity plant at Kajaki. Only when Luke returns home to Scotland does Anne's secret story begin to emerge, along with his, and they set out for an old guest house in Blackpool where she once kept a room.

In the early '60s, four friends from Liverpool formed a band. But this is not the 'fab four' story we know... Mary, Sylvia, Valerie and Pamela - also known as The Liverbirds - were one of the world's first all-female rock'n'roll bands. At an early gig, backstage at the Cavern Club, a young John Lennon told them that 'girls don't play guitars'. But they took that as a challenge. Despite the early scepticism, they won over tough crowds, toured stadiums, recorded two hit albums, and played with the Kinks, Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry - all in the space of just five years.

We live in a world where strongman politics are rising, neo-liberalism has hollowed out political parties and corporations have undermined democracy. Ordinary voters feel helpless to effect change, resulting in outbreaks of populist anger, and traditional platforms for debate are losing their viability as readers source information online. In this short and vital polemic, progressive thinker and activist Billy Bragg argues that accountability is the antidote to authoritarianism and that without it, we can never truly be free.

Volume one of the definitive collection of Seamus Heaney reading his own work, recorded in 2009 by RTE. Volume one contains four collections published between 1966 and 1975: Death of a Naturalist, Door into the Dark, Wintering Out and North.

One afternoon, a mother opens her front door to find the length of her son's body stretched out on the veranda, swaddled in akwete material, his head on her welcome mat. The Death of Vivek Oji transports us to the day of Vivek's birth, the day his grandmother Ahunna died. It is the story of an over protective mother and a distant father and the heart-wrenching tale of one family's struggle to understand their child, just as Vivek learns to recognise himself.

The sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid, in which Aeneas travels into the underworld to meet the spirit of his father, is a story that captivated Seamus Heaney from his schooldays. But the work took on a special significance for him after the death of his own father, becoming a touchstone to which he would return as an adult. His noble and moving translation of book VI bears the fruit of a lifetime's concentration upon it: he began translating passages in the 1980s and was finalising the work right up to the summer of his death.

December, 1989, and Ashley Smith - a bright-eyed American studying in London - has unexpectedly been invited by her classmate Emma Chapman to spend Christmas at her family's Cotswolds manor house, Starvewood Hall. The holiday is a true English fantasy: woodland walks, charming pubs and elaborate dinners at the manor, with the added romantic potential of Emma's twin brother, Adam, who feels like Ashley's wildest dreams come true. But is there something strange about the old house, both stately and rundown.

'The Waste Land' is a landmark in 20th-century poetry. Here it is read by the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Published in 1922, it is a brilliant exploration of a faithless, immoral society trying to rebuild itself after the devastation of the Great War. Rich in literary references and steeped in allusive and evocative imagery, 'The Waste Land' is widely considered to be the pinnacle of modernist poetry.

When Hen and Lloyd move into their new house in West Dartford, Mass., they're relieved to meet, at their first block party, the only other seemingly childless couple in their neighbourhood, Matthew and Mira Dolamore. Turns out they live in the Dutch Colonial immediately next door. When they're invited over for dinner, however, things take a sinister turn when Hen thinks she sees something suspicious in Matthew's study.

Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, 13-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a nation that is also emerging.

The woman in the purple skirt seems to live in a world of her own. She appears to glide through crowded streets without acknowledging any reaction her presence elicits. Each afternoon, she sits on the same park bench, eating a pastry and ignoring the local children who make a game of trying to get her attention. She may not know it, but the woman in the purple skirt being watched. Someone is following her, always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes, what she eats, whom she speaks to.

In 1975, a gangly black 16-year-old from Dudley, decked out in floppy bow tie and Frank Spencer beret, appeared on our TV screens for the first time. So began the transformation from apprentice factory worker to future national treasure of Sir Lenny Henry. In his long-awaited autobiography, Lenny tells the extraordinary story of his early years and sudden rise to fame.

Arriving in California as a young boy in the early 1960s, Edward Van Halen and his brother, Alex, were ripe for the coming musical revolution. The sons of a saxophone-playing Dutch father, the brothers discovered the Beatles, Cream and others. From the moment their hugely influential 1978 debut landed, Van Halen set a high bar for the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, creating an entirely new style of post-'60s' hard rock and becoming the quintessential Californian band of the 1980s. 

In 1962 the American statesman Dean Acheson famously charged that Britain had lost an empire and failed to find a new role. Nearly 60 years later the rebuke rings true again. Britain's postwar search for its place in the world has vexed prime ministers and government since the nation's great victory in 1945: the cost of winning the war was giving up the empire. After the humiliation of Anthony Eden's Suez expedition, Britain seemed for a time to have found an answer.

From his remarkable debut The Hawk in the Rain (1957) to his death in 1998, Ted Hughes was a colossal presence in the English literary landscape. He was also admired as a performer of his own work. Crow is one of his most significant collections, focusing on the central figure of the crow - predatory, mocking and indestructible. Crow is read here by the author in its entirety and with narrative links not included in the published text.

Shakespeare's position as England's national poet is established and unquestionable. But as James Shapiro illuminates in this revelatory new history, Shakespeare has long held an essential place in American culture. Why, though, would a proudly independent republic embrace England's greatest writer? Especially when his works enact so many of America's darkest nightmares: interracial marriage, cross-dressing, same-sex love, tyranny, and assassination?

Farm animals are familiar to us from childhood but little did we know that their inner lives are full of complexity, deep bonds and family dramas. Rosamund Young has been an organic farmer for over 40 years and this is her record of a life at the beck and call of the animals while observing and preserving the abundant wildlife at Kite's Nest Farm. It is a story of joy, discovery, co-operation and sometimes heartbreak.

Dorothy is a grieving housewife in the Californian suburbs. Her infant son, unborn child and dog have all just died; her husband is unfaithful; her only friend is an alcoholic. One day, she is doing chores when the radio announces that a green-skinned sea monster has escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research - but little did she expect him to arrive in her kitchen. Muscular yet gentle, vegetarian, sexually magnetic and excellent at housework, Larry the frogman is a revelation: and their passionate affair goes beyond their wildest dreams.

There are situations in which we fail for a moment to recognise the person we are with, in which the identity of the other is erased while we simultaneously doubt our own. This also happens with couples - indeed, above all with couples, because lovers fear more than anything else 'losing sight' of the loved one. With stunning artfulness in expanding and playing variations on the meaningful moment, Milan Kundera has made this situation - and the vague sense of panic it inspires - the very fabric of this novel.

Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household, happy in their differences, as they build a home together. Home: the place where your navel string is buried, keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world. Happy and loving they are, until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.