FaberBooks

Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers and The Wasted Vigil, spoke to the Faber Podcast recently about his new novel The Blind Man's Garden, set in contemporary Afghanistan on the verge of war in the wake of 9/11. Nadeem also read three extracts from the book, which you can listen to here.

Like Nadeem Aslam's previous novel The Wasted Vigil, The Blind Man's Garden is set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. But whereas its predecessor focused on foreign characters who came to Afghanistan from other nations, in the new book Aslam explores how a group of Pakistani characters experience the onset of the war on terror. The conflict is never far away in one of the most raptur...

A wonderful reading from poet Alice Oswald at Faber Social's evening celebrating Nature Writing. Recorded at The Social, London on 2 July, 2012. Find out more about Faber Social events at www.faber.co.uk/events/social.

The first of two readings from Neil McKenna's colourful account of the lives of Fanny and Stella, two effeminate cross-dressing young men who shocked Victorian England with their antics.

The first of two readings from Neil McKenna's colourful account of the lives of Fanny and Stella, two effeminate cross-dressing young men who shocked Victorian England with their antics.

Neil McKenna's rollicking and extremely colourful 'Fanny and Stella' is an account of the lives and loves of two effeminate cross-dressing young men whom Victorian society found every bit as shocking as Oscar Wilde (the subject of the author's previous award-winning biography). Like Wilde, Fanny and Stella found themselves on trial for the way they lived and, McKenna argues, like Wilde's trial a q...

David Peace is the bestselling author of 'The Damned Utd', 'The Red Riding Quartet' and 'GB84'. Here he reads an extract from his upcoming novel 'Red or Dead' (publishing in August 2013), which tells the story of Bill Shankly, perhaps the first truly great football manager of the modern age. Find out more about the book at http://faber.co.uk/redordead

The third of three extracts from Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, a book that's very hard to pin down - it's fictionalised non-fiction in which some of its characters are real, others invented. Read here by the author.

The second of three extracts from Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, a book that's very hard to pin down - it's fictionalised non-fiction in which some of its characters are real, others invented. Read here by the author.

The first of three extracts from Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, a book that's very hard to pin down - it's fictionalised non-fiction in which some of its characters are real, others invented. Read here by the author.

Orhan Pamuk was our first ever interviewee for the Faber Podcast, back in 2007 shortly after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He returns to talk to us about Silent House, a novel first published in Turkish some three decades ago, but only now available in English. The book - a family's story told by multiple narrators each with their own viewpoint - is set in the summer before the 198...

Jilted on her wedding day at the last moment, still wearing her dress years later, among the ruins of her wedding breakfast ... But how did someone born into privilege, who seemed to have everything going for her, end up in such a desperate state of spinsterhood? In his new novel 'Havisham' Ronald Frame (who Alexander McCall Smith has called 'Scotland's finest contemporary writer') imagines the ea...

'This has been the story of your life ... Whenever you come to a fork in the road, your body breaks down, for your body has always known what your mind doesn’t know … your body has always borne the brunt of your fears and inner battles.' Thirty years after The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster returns to memoir - though he says he prefers to think of the book as a collection of autobiographical f...

Paul Auster may be best known for his novels - among them The New York Trilogy, The Brooklyn Follies, The Music of Chance and The Book of Illusions - but he first won acclaim with a memoir, his debut work The Invention of Solitude, which he wrote in the aftermath of his father’s sudden death. Now, thirty years later, Auster returns to memoir - though he says he prefers to think of the book as a co...

The publication of Edna O'Brien's memoir is one of the major literary events of 2012 Born in Ireland in 1930 and driven into exile after publication of her controversial first novel, The Country Girls, O'Brien has created a body of work which bears comparison with the very best writers of the twentieth century. Here she is reading the second of two extracts from the book. An interview with the aut...

The publication of Edna O'Brien's memoir is one of the major literary events of 2012. Born in Ireland in 1930 and driven into exile after publication of her controversial first novel, The Country Girls, O'Brien has created a body of work which bears comparison with the very best writers of the twentieth century. Here she is reading the first of two extracts. An interview with the author is also av...

For over 50 years Edna O'Brien has been writing about Ireland - in particular, bringing the lives of Irish women to the page with an honesty that had never before been encountered. Her career began in 1960 with The Country Girls, which caused great scandal in her homeland. Driven into exile, she has gone on to create a body of work that bears comparison with the very best writers of the twentieth...

Actor turned author John Gordon Sinclair's debut Seventy Times Seven is a pitch-black thriller featuring two Republican brothers, supergrasses and paramilitaries, set in Northern Ireland and Alabama in the early 1990s. There's a climate of violence, bad blood a hangover from The Troubles. This is the second of two extracts to accompany John's interview for the Faber Podcast.

Actor turned author John Gordon Sinclair's debut Seventy Times Seven is a pitch-black thriller featuring two Republican brothers, supergrasses and paramilitaries, set in Northern Ireland and Alabama in the early 1990s. There's a climate of violence, bad blood a hangover from The Troubles. This is one of two extracts to accompany John's interview for the Faber Podcast.

Danny McGuire doesn't like his job, but he's good at it. Since his brother's murder eight years earlier he has become a professional killer: a hit man for hire. Danny's been contracted to eliminate the 'Thevshi' - the Ghost - the most elusive informant that has ever penetrated the Republican movement in Northern Ireland. But there's a problem: the Thevshi claims to know who's responsible for his b...

Jeet Thayil reads from his Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Narcopolis. Recorded at the Faber Social on 2 July 2012, at The Social in London.

Francis Spufford is the author of 'I May Be Some Time: Ice and the Imagination', 'The Child that Books Built' and the genre-defying 'Red Plenty'. His new book, 'Unapologetic' is much more personal and polemical - the subtitle makes plain his purpose: 'Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense'. It's an impassioned account of what Christianity means to him as a...

'Unapologetic' is Francis Spufford's brief, witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christian belief, taking on Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' and Christopher Hitchens' 'God is Not Great'. It's a much more polemical book than the author has written before - his previous books include 'I May Be Some Time: Ice and the Imagination' and the genre-defying 'Red Plenty' - and you can listen to ext...

The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes, taken from Poems for Children, read by the author. Ted Hughes' poetry for children is as rich, powerful and magical as anything he wrote. This new recording consists of a collection of the children's poems of Ted Hughes, introduced and selected by acclaimed writer Michael Morpurgo, and read by both Morpurgo and actor Juliet Stevenson. For more information on the aud...

'The Thought-Fox' by Ted Hughes, taken from Poems for Children, read by the author. Some of the most delightful poems ever written for children, brought evocatively to life in this wonderful new audio edition. Ted Hughes' poetry for children is as rich, powerful and magical as anything he wrote. This new recording consists of a collection of the children's poems of Ted Hughes, introduced and selec...