Lord of the Flies

Description

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of school boys, 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 modern classics.

William Golding was born in 1911, becoming an actor, a lecturer, small-boat sailor and a musician before becoming a school master. A rare volume, Poems, appeared in 1934. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and was prseent at the sinking of the Bismark. He finished the war as a Lieutenant in Command of a rocket ship. After the war he returned to the school where he previously taught and was still there when his first novel, Lord of the Flies was published in 1954. He gave up teaching in 1961. He won the Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died in 1993. Martin Jarvis is often referred to as the 'wizard of the talking book. His international career encompasses Numb3rs, Murder She Wrote, Morse, David Copperfield and The Bill.