The Firewalkers

Description

First published in 1956, under the pseudonym "Frank Cauldwell", this accomplished comedy of manners is set among British expatriates and exotic locals in a Greece still undiscovered by tourism. Written with an infectious enjoyment and good humour, the story of the flamboyant and temperamental Colonel Theodore Grecos and his devotion to the completely unsophisticated Goetz Joachim provides Francis King with ample scope for his mastery of ironic observation. In the Introduction to this edition, the author explains how The Firewalkers came to be written, born out of "the exhilarating sense of liberation that came to me on first setting foot in Athens".

Born in Switzerland, Francis King spent his childhood in India, where his father was a government official. While still an undergraduate at Oxford he published his first three novels. He then joined the British Council, working in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Finland and Japan, before he resigned to devote himself entirely to writing. For some years he was drama critic for the Sunday Telegraph and he reviewed fiction regularly for the Spectator. He won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Katherine Mansfield Prize and the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award for Act of Darkness (1983). His penultimate book, The Nick of Time, was long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. Francis King died in 2011. "One of our great writers, of the calibre of Graham Greene and Nabokov." Beryl Bainbridge

'Astonishingly good. A witty and sympathetic writer who makes the most of his remarkable material, inventing characters and incidents with loving imaginative skill' Guardian 'Excellent. The author has the ability to be funny and moving at the same time, and his Theo and Gotz are two of the most engaging and human eccentrics I have met for a long time' Spectator 'Writes extremely well and holds our attention throughout not only delightfully but movingly' Times Literary Supplement