Sebastian Faulks Biography

British novelist, born in Newbury, Berkshire, educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist for ten years, and in 1986 became Literary Editor of The Independent. His first novel, A Trick of the Light (1984), was followed by The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), a love story set in France during the 1930s, and A Fool's Alphabet (1992), in which the Anglo-Italian narrator explores significant moments in his life, chronicling them in the form of an alphabet. Faulks's lucid, understated style and his eye for the details of time and place are shown to advantage in his most ambitious novel, Birdsong (1994), about the First World War, which was widely acclaimed for its sensitive treatment of the central relationship between a young Englishman and a married Frenchwoman, and for its evocation of the horrors of trench warfare.