Faber Books – Part 1 – Paul Auster

Faber & Faber are an interesting imprint, and they were adventurous in the authors they chose to publish. Always, you could rely on a Faber & Faber book to be out of the ordinary.

I suppose I discovered the writings of Paul Auster when a friend, who happened to be the Faber rep for Australia gave me the proof copy of The New York Trilogy in 1987 and I was subsequently blown away by it.

I sporadically collected his novels thereafter, and though they failed to thrill me after a time, I did enjoy In the Country of Last Things and Moon Palace.

An author you don’t hear much about these days is Djuna Barnes. Her most famous novel, Nightwood, was a must have novel if you in any way embraced the counter culture of the 1960/1970s. The cover is typical of Faber books of the 1960s...

…as is the case of the paperback editions of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet , a series that was immensely popular in the 1960s. I reread them about five years ago, and found them to be surprisingly well worth the effort.

Durrell’s other great sequence of novels was the Avignon Quintet which also has references to the Alexandrian series.

Monsieur, Livia & Constance are all paperback editions, but Sebastian and Quinx are first edition hard covers. The delicate cover art is by David Gentleman.

That’s it for tonight, but I will continue with more Lawrence Durrell next time.