Golding's best-known novel is the story of a group of boys who, after a plane crash, set up a fragile community on a previously uninhabited island. As memories of home recede and the blood from frenzied pig-hunts arouses them, the boys' childish fear turns into something deeper and more primitive.
The iconic classic in a luxurious anniversary edition, with a foreword by Stephen King.
'There aren't any grown-ups anywhere.'
A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of schoolboys. By day, they explore the dazzling beaches, gorging fruit, seeking shelter, and ripping off their uniforms to swim in the lagoon. At night, in the darkness of the jungle, they are haunted by nightmares of a primitive beast. Orphaned by society, they must forge their own; but it isn't long before their innocent games devolve into something far more dangerous . . .
'Beautifully written, tragic and provocative.' E.M. Forster
'Beautiful and desperate... something quite out of the ordinary.' The Observer
Author
About William Golding
William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Apart from writing, his past and present occupations include being a schoolmaster, a lecturer, an actor, a sailor, and a musician. His father was a schoolmaster and his mother was a suffragette. He was brought up to be a scientist, but revolted. After two years at Oxford he read English literature instead. He spent five years at Oxford and then published a volume of poems in 1935. He was present off the French coast for the D-Day invasion, and later at the island of Walcheren. After the war he returned to teaching, and began to write again. Lord of the Flies, his first novel, was published in 1954. It was filmed by Peter Brook in 1963. In 1980 he won the 'Booker Prize' for his novel Rites of Passage. He retired from teaching in 1962. After that, he lived in Wiltshire, listing his recreations as music, sailing, archaeology and classical Greek. William Golding died in 1993.
