Book description
Terrified, a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes
and pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire.
Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse, a father too ashamed
to acknowledge his son.
A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends
shivers through the skull.
Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians
risk their bodies and hearts in search of connection - some key to
understanding what makes us the people we become.
Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks's dazzling novel journeys
across continents and time to explore the chaos created by love,
separation and missed opportunities. From the pain and drama of these
highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation: the chance
to feel your heart beat in someone else's life.
Sebastian Faulks was born and brought up in Newbury, Berkshire. He
worked in journalism before starting to write books. He is best known
for the French trilogy,
The Girl at the Lion d'Or
,
Birdsong
and
Charlotte
Gray
(1989-1997) and is also the author of a triple biography,
The Fatal Englishman
(1996); a small book of literary parodies,
Pistache
(2006); and the novels
Human
Traces
(2005),
Engleby
(2007) and
A Week in December
(2009). He lives in London with his wife and their three children.
