Saturday, May 15, 2010

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.

auster_nytrilogy

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.

auster_lastthings auster_moonpalace

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...

barnes_nightwood

…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_justine durrell_balthaser
durrell_mountolive durrell_clea

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.

durrell_monsieur durrell_livia
durrell_constance durrell_sebastian

durrell_quinx

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

1 comment:

Ian Sales said...

I have rather a lot of Durrell myself - see here and here.