Rites of Passage - Softcover

Golding, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571298540 ISBN 13: 9780571298549

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2013

Synopsis

With an introduction by Robert McCrum

The first volume of William Golding's Sea Trilogy.

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.

'The work of a master at the full stretch of his age and wisdom - necessary, provoking, urgent, rich, complex and rare.' The Times

'An extraordinary novel.' Observer

'Golding's best and most accessible story since Lord of the Flies.' Melvyn Bragg

About this title

About the Author:

William Golding (1911-1993) was a Booker and Nobel Prize-winning author, best known for his first novel, Lord of the Flies, published originally in 1954 and adapted for film in 1963. His other works include The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), The Spire (1964), Rites of Passage (1980), The Double Tongue (published posthumously in 1995) a now rare volume, Poems (1934) and the essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target. Golding was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before his writing career, Golding was a schoolmaster. He was also a keen actor, musician and small-boat sailor. In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0571298540
• ISBN 13: 9780571298549
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320