Birdsong

Format:	Paperback 528 pages

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Synopsis

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.

Book details

Published
18/07/1994

Publisher
Vintage

ISBN
9780099387916

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

"Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a prefect novel--just a great one."--Simon Schama, "New Yorker"
"An amazing book--among the most stirringly erotic I have read for years...I have read it and re-read it and can think of no other novel for many, many years that has so moved me or stimulated in me so much reflection on the human spirit."--Quentin Crewe, "Daily Mail"
"This book is so powerful that as I finished it I turned to the front to start again."--Andrew James, "Sunday Express"
"One of the finest novels of the last 40 years."--Brian Masters, "Mail on Sunday"
"This is literature at its very best: a book with the power to reveal the unimagined, so that one's life is set in a changed context. I urge you to read it."--Nigel Watts, "Time Out"

UK Kirkus review

Curiously, it is the fighting in World War I more than World War II that resonates in the imagination of contemporary writers. Its now unimaginable and unimaginative killing fields, commemorated by the rows of simple white crosses, reverberates now as much as ever. Birdsong is possibly the finest example of this cross-fertilization, pipping Pat Barker and Geoff Dyer to the post. After beginning in Amiens, France, in 1910, the action of this much-praised novel shifts between the French battlefields of the First World War and suburban England in the late 1970s. It is both a passionate love story and a tale of camaraderie and isolation in war. (Kirkus UK)

About the author

Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks worked as a journalist for 14 years before taking up writing books full time in 1991. He is the author of A Trick of Light, The Girl at the Lion D'Or, A Fool's Alphabet, The Fatal Englishman, Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, On Green Dolphin Street, Human Traces, and most recently, A Week in December.