The Sunlight on the Garden

Description

Francis King's range, both geographical and emotional, was always as remarkable in his short stories as in his novels. In this collection, there are stories that are poignantly valedictory, like the title one, with its unflinching examination of the relationships between a tough, self-willed elderly man and the young woman determined to exploit him. There are three chilling stories of the supernatural, `Now You See It', set in Egypt, `The Pushchair', set in Brighton, and `The Sitting Tenant', set in contemporary London. In `Dreams', an old man recollects an event-the most important of his whole life, he now realises-that took place during a school holiday in Belgium during the immediate prelude to World War Two. `Everyone is Nobody' is a devastating study of bereavement. Without exception, all the stories show King's characteristic combination of subtlety and force of emotion.

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

'His voice is utterly convincing' Beryl Bainbridge, Daily Telegraph