Download or read book William Golding written by John Carey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1953, William Golding was a provincial schoolteacher writing books on his breaks, lunch hours and holidays. His work had been rejected by every major publisher—until an editor at Faber and Faber pulled his manuscript off the rejection pile. This was to become Lord of the Flies, a book that would sell in the millions and bring Golding worldwide recognition. Golding went on to become one of the most popular and influential British authors to have emerged since World War II. He received the Booker Prize for the novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Stephen King has stated that the Castle Rock in Lord of the Flies continues to inspire him, so much so that he named his entertainment company after it and has placed the Golding novel prominently in his novels Hearts in Atlantis and Cujo. Golding has been called a British Vonnegut—disheveled and darkly humorous, perverse when it would have been easier to be bitter, bitter when it would have been easier to be lazy, sometimes more disturbing than he is palatable and above all fascinating beyond measure. Yet despite the fame and acclaim, the renowned author saw himself as a monster—a reclusive depressive ruled by his fears and a man who battled alcoholism throughout his life. In addition to being a schoolteacher, Golding was a scientist, a sailor and a poet before becoming a bestselling author, and his embitterment and alienation, his family, the women in his past, along with his experiences in the war, inform his work. This is the first book to unpack the life and character of a man whose entire oeuvre dealt with the conflict between light and dark in the human soul, tracing the defects of society back to the defects of human nature itself. Drawing almost entirely on materials that have never before been made public, John Carey sheds new light on Golding. Through his exclusive access to Golding’s family, Carey uses hundreds of letters, unpublished works and Golding’s intimate journals to draw a revelatory and definitive portrait. An acclaimed critic, Carey enriches crucially our appreciation of the literary work of Golding, bringing us, as the best literary biographies do, back to the books. And with equal parts lyricism and driving emotion, Carey brings to light a life that is extraordinary to the point of transcendent and a writer who trusted the imagination above all things.
Download or read book Lord of the Flies written by William Golding and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern classics. Now fully revised and updated, this educational edition includes chapter summaries, comprehension questions, discussion points, classroom activities, a biographical profile of Golding, historical context relevant to the novel and an essay on Lord of the Flies by William Golding entitled 'Fable'. Aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 students, it also includes a section on literary theory for advanced or A-level students. The educational edition encourages original and independent thinking while guiding the student through the text - ideal for use in the classroom and at home.
Download or read book To the Ends of the Earth written by William Golding and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the Ends of the Earth, William Golding's great sea trilogy, presents the extraordinary story of a warship's troubled journey to Australia in the early 1800s. Told through the pages of Edmund Talbolt's journall--with equal measure of wit and disdain--it records the mounting tensions and growing misfortunes aboard the ancient ship. An instant maritime classic, and one of Golding's finest achievements, the trilogy was adapted into a major three-part Mastpiece Theatre drama in 2006.
Download or read book Free Fall written by William Golding and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War Two, he is taken as a prisoner-of-war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell transfigured from his ordeal, and begins to realise what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. But did those accumulated choices also begin to deprive him of his free will.
Download or read book The Inheritors written by William Golding and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1962 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small tribe of Neanderthals find themselves at odds with a tribe comprised of homo sapiens, whose superior intelligence and agility threatens their doom.
Download or read book Lord of the Flies Centenary Edition written by William Golding and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic novel by William Golding With a new Introduction by Stephen King "To me Lord of the Flies has always represented what novels are for, what makes them indispensable." -Stephen King Golding's classic, startling, and perennially bestselling portrait of human nature remains as provocative today as when it was first published. This beautiful new edition features French flaps and rough fronts, making it a must-have for fans of this seminal work. William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories—and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible. Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic.
Download or read book The Pyramid written by William Golding and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follow young Oliver's rebellious coming-of-age in the village of Stillbourne in this comic novel by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies. Eighteen is a good time for suffering Welcome to the country town of Stillbourne. Restless teenage resident Oliver wants to enjoy himself before going to university, beginning with his pursuit of the Town Crier's daughter. But in this claustrophobic community - stifled by the English class system, and where everybody knows everyone's business - love, lust and rebellion are closely followed by revenge and embarrassment . . . 'Golding depicts with subtle skill all the pains of growing up and growing old. He treats us to some superb comic episodes.' Daily Telegraph 'Golding's most approachable novel and a curiously personal one, that returns to the mind again and again as if the shames and idylls were one's own.' Guardian 'Neatly drawn, funny and touching . . . The snap, the tang, and the tension in Golding's prose is always a pleasure.' Harper's
Download or read book The Spire written by William Golding and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Succumb to one churchman's apocalyptic vision in this prophetic tale by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding (recorded by Benedict Cumberbatch as an audiobook). There were three sorts of people. Those who ran, those who stayed, and those who were built in. Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire. His master builder fearfully advises against it, for the old cathedral was miraculously built without foundations. But Jocelin is obsessed with fashioning his prayer in stone. As his halo of hair grows wilder and his dark angel darker, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, watched over by the gargoyles - until the stone pillars shriek, the earth beneath creeps, and the spire's shadow falls like an axe on the medieval world below ... 'Astounding ... So recklessly beautiful, so sad and so strange ... Holds such a place in my soul that it's more or less a sacred text.' Sarah Perry 'A kind of miracle ... Genius.' Guardian ' Quite simply, a marvel.' NYRB ' Superb ... A classic.' Rebecca West 'A master fabulist .. An iconoclast.' John Fowles 'A visionary ... His masterwork [of] faith, folly and desperate desire ... Golding at his best.' Benjamin Myers
Download or read book Close Quarters written by William Golding and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lose yourself in an epic naval journey in the second novel in the Booker Prize-winning historical fiction Sea Trilogy by the author of Lord of the Flies. This tropical nowhere was the whole world - the whole imaginable world. A decrepit warship is becalmed halfway to Australia, stilled in an ocean wilderness of heat and sea mists. In this surreal, fête-like atmosphere, a ball is held with a passing ship: the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them seaweed like green hair spreads omniously over the hull. Half-mad with fear, drink, love and opium, both vessel and passengers feel themselves going to pieces: and the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship comes apart at the seams . . . 'Fantastic ... Gems tumble off the pages ... A strong sense of drama ... Much of the pleasure of reading his work is his original imagery.' Annie Proulx 'No living writer has represented the fragility of man's experience so marvellously as Golding.' AS Byatt 'It is in Golding's magnificent, therapeutic, terrifying descriptions of seascapes that the deepest meanings can be found.' Kate Mosse 'Stunning . . . As exciting as any thriller.' Sunday Times 'A feat of imaginative reconstruction, as vivid as a dream.' Daily Mail 'Tells an utterly absorbing tale, in language of immense force and subtlety.' Financial Times To The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy - Book Two
Download or read book Fire Down Below written by William Golding and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1989 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final book in a classic series that began with the Man Booker Prize-winning Rites of Passage To the Ends of the Earth, William Golding's great sea trilogy, presents the extraordinary story of a warship's troubled journey to Australia in the early 1800s. Told through the pages of Edmund Talbot's journal--with equal measure of wit and disdain--it records the mounting tensions and growing misfortunes aboard the ancient ship. An instant maritime classic, and one of Golding's finest achievements, the trilogy was adapted into a major BBC/PBS Masterpiece miniseries staring Benedict Cumberbatch, Jared Harris and Sam Neill. To the Ends of the Earth: 1. Rites of Passage 2. Close Quarters 3. Fire Down Below
Download or read book William Golding written by Ian Gregor and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2002 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new and enlarged edition of the standard critical study of the novels of William Golding. In 1967 Mark Kinkead-Weekes and Ian Gregor offered critical readings of the first five novels, from Lord of the Flies to The Spire. In 1984, by which time the authority of their book was established and Golding had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the original study was enlarged by a long essay taking account of the next three novels, including Darkness Visible and Rites of Passage, which won the Booker Prize. Ian Gregor died in 1995. Mark Kinkead-Weekes has now completed their joint undertaking, revising and expanding the second-edition essay into three separate chapters, and adding new ones on the last four novels, The Paper Men, Close Quarters, Fire Down Below and the unfinished The Double Tongue, which was published posthumously. As well as providing readings of the individual novels, two chapters reflect on Golding's writings as a whole. The authors knew him personally and discussed many of his books with him. This study stands, therefore, as an unrivalled and contemporary view of the emergence of the works one by one, their relation to one another, and their collective distinction as the astonishing imaginative achievement of a great English writer and moralist. Golding's daughter, Judy Carver, who is editing his journals, has contributed an invaluable biographical sketch of her father.
Download or read book The Scorpion God written by William Golding and published by . This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rites of Passage written by William Golding and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1980 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1980 Booker Prize Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, Edmund Talbot keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back in England. Full of wit and disdain, he records the mounting tensions on the ancient, sinking warship where officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the cramped spaces below decks. Then a single passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a "hell of degradation," where shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself. William Golding's To the Ends of the Earth trilogy is now a BBC/PBS Masterpiece miniseries staring Benedict Cumberbatch, Jared Harris and Sam Neill. To the Ends of the Earth: 1. Rites of Passage 2. Close Quarters 3. Fire Down Below
Download or read book The Double Tongue written by William Golding and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an introduction by Meg Rosoff William Golding's final novel, left in draft at his death, tells the story of a priestess of Apollo. Arieka is one of the last to prophesy at Delphi, in the shadowy years when the Romans were securing their grip on the tribes and cities of Greece. The plain, unloved daughter of a local grandee, she is rescued from the contempt and neglect of her family by her Delphic role. Her ambiguous attitude to the god and her belief in him seem to move in parallel with the decline of the god himself - but things are more complicated than they appear. 'A remarkable work ... A compelling storyteller as well as a clear-eyed philosopher of the dangerous puzzles of being human.' The Times 'A wonderful central character. The story stretches out as clean and dry and clear as the beach in Lord of the Flies.' Independent 'Feline, deadpan and at moments hilarious.' Observer
Download or read book The Novels of William Golding written by Indu Kulkarni and published by Atlantic Publishers & Dist. This book was released on 2003 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Bradbury On William Golding Golding Addressed Fundamental Questions Of Good And Evil, Being, Wholeness And Creative Aspiration In A Godless Age. His Stories Were, He Once Said, Not Fables But Myths Fable Being An Invented Thing Out On The Surface Whereas Myth In Something That Comes Out Of The Roots Of Things In The Ancient Sense Of Being A Key To Existence...And Experience As A Whole.Golding S Work Challenges Many Of The Liberal And Humanistic Conventions Of Much British Fiction, And There Is A Certain Timelessness About The Prose Though Not The Technique Which Makes It Stand Monumentally Apart From Much Contemporary Writing. But It Is And Will Surely Remain A Central Contribution To The Modern British Novel.The 1983 Nobel Prize Winner Author, Golding Had The Unique Distinction Of Being Both A Fabulist And A Realist.Golding S Works Will Remain Of Significant Relevance As Long As Man Continues To Careen Madly On The Razor S Edge Of So-Called Civilisation While His Ugly True Self-Barbaric And Greedy Claims His Soul In Mephistophilean Triumph. At Times Golding S Eschatological Views Are Sombre, But He Weaves A Torturous Path Through The Paradoxes Of Good And Evil In His Novels; Pincher Martin, Darkness Visible And The Spire (To Name Only A Few). He Tried To Achieve A Synthesis Of Flesh And Spirit Through An Illuminating Reconciliation. Golding Wished To Salvage The Soul Of Man From The Wreckage Of 20Th Century Godlessness, Entropy And The Malaise Of Whoring After False Gods.How Do You React To The Charge Of Peter Moss And A Number Of Critics That You Are A Pessimist?I Would Call Myself A Universal Pessimist But A Cosmic Optimist. My Novels Examine The Human Condition. Just As A Doctor Diagnoses A Physical Disease I Explore The Spiritual Ills Of Man. I Am Too Old To Go About Preaching On The State Of Man, But One Has To Harbour Hope. The Very Act Of Living Today Is One Of Hope.Golding S Commitment To Truth And Reality Is Undying. He Speaks Through Samuel Mount-Joy In Free Fall: But We Are Neither The Innocent Nor The Wicked. We Are The Guilty. We Fall Down. We Crawl On Hands And Knees. We Weep And Tear Each Other. Or Again: I Am Looking For The Beginning Of Responsibility, The Beginning Of Darkness, The Point Where I Began. Golding Demands From Man A Moral Evolution, A Spiritual Growth Worthy Of His Species. As He Observed, What The World Now Needs Is The Homomoralis The Human Being Who Cannot Kill His Own Kind, Nor Exploit Them Nor Rob Them.
Download or read book Pincher Martin written by William Golding and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the icy desolation of the North Atlantic, Christopher Hadley Martin is drowning. Then unbelievably, out of the mirk looms a shape bigger than any ship, as he drags himself onto it and comes to his senses he starts to realise the appalling truth.
Download or read book The Paper Men written by William Golding and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join an eccentric novelist on the run from his obsessive would-be biographer in this comic farce by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies. Why should I conceal the fact that I had found a full professor of Eng. Lit. rifling my dustbin? Fame, fortune, alcoholism, a failing marriage: for novelist Wilfred Barclay, his final unbearable irritation is his would-be-biographer, the young academic Professor Rick L. Tucker, who is determined to become The Barclay Man. Locked in a lethal relationship, the two men stumble across Europe, shedding wives, self-respect and identities in a game of literary cat and mouse - and the climax of their odyssey, when it comes, is as inevitable as it is unexpected . . . 'A complex literary comedy from an extraordinarily powerful writer, which holds us right through to the end.' Malcolm Bradbury 'Rich as a compost heap . . . It moves you and at times it can shake you.' Melvyn Bragg '[Golding's] splendid comic gift is used to often hilarious effect, running the whole gamut of comedy, from irony to farce . . . Hugely enjoyable.' Daily Telegraph
