Free Fall

Question everything in this philosophical tale by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies. 'Marvellous.' A.S. Byatt 'Astonishing.' John Gray 'Luminous.' Rose Tremain I could take whichever I would of these paths. Sammy Mountjoy is an artist who has risen from poverty to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War II, he is captured as a German prisoner of war, threatened with torture and locked in a cell of total darkness. He emerges transfigured by his ordeal, realising how his choices have made him the author of his life, interrogating religion and rationality, early loves and formative beliefs - and questioning freedom itself.

William Golding (1911 - 1993) was born in Cornwall. His first novel, Lord of the Flies, was rescued from the 'reject pile' at Faber and published in 1954. It became a modern classic selling millions of copies, translated into 44 languages and made into a film. Golding wrote eleven other novels, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize and Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988 and died in 1993.