Michael Frayn

Its the other people around you, says Michael Frayn, who make you what you are. So he would like to say a brief word, looking back on life from his ninetieth year, about a few of the people who have formed his own particular world.Some were friends; some not; some more than friends. Some have had a profound effect; some only a passing one. Some you may know yourself; some you certainly wont. Some he now wonders if he ever really knew himself. The last of his subjects in this selection, and the longest and closest acquaintance of all, is his own body, a companion on lifes road at least as idiosyncratic and puzzling as everyone and everything around it. Among Others is a patchwork memoir of a lifetimes encounters. Truthful and loving, sometimes elegiac, sometimes comic, it is a celebration of the endlessly intriguing otherness of others.

Why not programme computers to take over the really dull jobs that human beings have to do - such as praying and behaving morally? At the William Morris Institute of Automaton Research they are doing just that to free mankind for the really stimulating and demanding tasks of living today - first and foremost the impending visit of Her Majesty the Queen to open its new wing . . .

Easily the most original thing Frayn has done . . . written with elegant simplicity.New StatesmanUncumber lives at a time in the distant future when all humanity is divided in two - the Insiders and the Outsiders. The Insiders are privileged, with their every need catered to by somatic drugs, three-dimensional holovision and a prolonged life. Uncumber lives in this luxurious world and is told that she must never go out into the dust and disease of the real world. Uncumber, however, is haunted by a restless and inquisitive spirit. When she falls in love with an Outsider, she decides to go exploring ...A fairy tale of the future.Guardian

In mid-career, Michael Frayn took up his old trade of journalism, and wrote a series of occasional articles for the Observer about some of the places in the world that interested him. He wanted to describe not the extraordinary but the ordinary, the typical, the everyday, and his accounts became the starting point for some of the novels and plays he wrote later. From a kibbutz in Israel to summer rains in Japan, bicycles in Cambridge to Notting Hill at the end of the 1950s, they are glimpses of a world that sometimes seems tantalisingly familiar, sometimes vanished forever. Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize."All writers of fiction should be required by law to go out and do a bit of reporting from time to time, just to remind them how different the real world in front of their eyes is from the invented world behind them."Michael Frayn Whether hes on a kibbutz or a bicycle, Frayn makes acute observations and the writing is enchanting.Conde Nast Traveller

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Headlong begins when Martin Clay, a young would-be art historian, believes he has discovered a missing masterpiece. The owner of the painting is oblivious to its potential and asks Martin to help him sell it, leaving Martin with the chance of a lifetime: if he could only separate the painter from its owner, he would be able to perform a great public service, to make his professional reputation, perhaps even rather a lot of money as well. But is the painting really what Martin believes it to be? As Martin is drawn further into this moral and intellectual labyrinth, events start to spiral out of control . . . Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Whitbread Novel Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, Headlong is an ingeniously comic thriller that follows a young philosophy lectuerers obsessive race through the art world in search of an elusive masterpiece. Michael Frayns other novels include Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel award, and Skios, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Bit of a wide boy, Terry. Got a spot of form, eye for the ladies, a real rough diamond some might say. Not without his virtues, though, as his campaign for open government shows. No secrets, thats Terrys secret. Allied to charm, that is, of course. Only one person finds it easy to resist his charm and counter his arguments and thats Hilary - one of the serious and dedicated young Civil Servants working in the Home Office in Westminster, who just happens to know the truth about the case in which Terry is currently interested. She despises him and everything he stands for. But then why is she to be found one evening walking through the back streets behind the Strand, to the run-down block where Terrys pressure group has its headquarters? Now You Know takes on government campaigns, ambitious civil servants and determined pressure groups with Frayns trade-mark wit. Michael Frayns other novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award.

In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bombsite. But the two boys start to suspect that all is not what it seems when one day Keith announces a disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family. And when the secret underground world they have dreamed up emerges from the shadows they find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for.Bernard Shaw couldnt do it, Henry James couldnt do it, but the ingenious English author Michael Frayn does do it: write novels and plays with equal success ... Frayns novel excels. John updike, New YorkerA beautifully accomplished, richly nostalgic novel about supposed second-world-war espionage seen through the eyes of a young boy.Sunday TimesDeeply satisfying . . . Frayn has written nothing better.Independent

Michael Frayns classic novel is set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street, John Dyson, a mid-level editor, dreams wistfully of fame and the gentlemanly life -- until one day his great chance of glory arrives. But does he have what it takes to succeed in the exciting world of television?

Matchbox Theatre presents a miniature sketch show: thirty dialogues and monologues by Michael Frayn, to be played in the smallest theatre in the world - the theatre of your own imagination.Sir Geoffrye and Lady Hilarye, sleeping peacefully on their marble tomb these last six hundred years, are woken by the thump of rock music in the crypt beneath them...A gala performance of Shakespeare, and as a special treat the sponsors guests are being wined and dined on stage as extras in the banquet scene...The eternal triangle in an airport departure lounge: two lovers and the flight announcements...The scripts are provided. Everything else - casting, set design, ice-cream sales - is up to the reader...

First published in 1974 and republished following the success of Frayns masterly work of philosophy, The Human Touch, Constructions is a dazzling, thought-provoking and fascinating book which explores some of the great problems in philosophy and of everyday life.

Longlisted for the Man Booker PrizeGood God, thought Oliver, as he saw the smile. She thinks Im him! And all at once he knew it was so. He was Dr Norman Wilfred.On the sunlit Greek island of Skios, the Fred Toppler Foundations annual lecture is to be given by Dr Norman Wilfred, the world-famous authority on the scientific organisation of science. He turns out to be surprisingly young and charming - not at all the intimidating figure they had been expecting. The Foundations guests are soon eating out of his hand. So, even sooner, is Nikki, the attractive and efficient organiser.Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, Nikkis old school-friend Georgie waits for the notorious chancer she has rashly agreed to go on holiday with, and who has only too characteristically failed to turn up. Trapped in the villa with her, by an unfortunate chain of misadventure, is a balding old gent called Dr Norman Wilfred, who has lost his whereabouts, his luggage, his temper and increasingly all normal sense of reality - everything he possesses apart from the flyblown text of a well-travelled lecture on the scientific organisation of science... And as the time draws ever nearer for one or other Dr Wilfred - or possibly both - to give the eagerly awaited lecture, so Skios - Greece - Europe - career off their appointed track. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Skios is a story of mislaid identity, misdirected passion and miscalculated consequences. Michael Frayn is also the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His other bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award.

Imaginative, funny and dazzlingly clever. John Carey, Sunday TimesMankind, scientists agree, is a tiny and insignificant anomaly in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would it even be so vast, without the fact of our insignificance to give it scale?This paradox is what Michael Frayn calls the worlds oldest mystery. He shows how fleeting and indeterminate our contacts with the world around us are. The world is what we make of it - but what are we?The breadth of [Frayns] reading is awesome and he is fearless in interpreting, and in some cases attacking, the philosophical or scientific dogmas of this or that revered savant. Everywhere he is eminently sensible, especially when he is making nonsense of our illusory certainties. John BanvilleBrilliant and engaging ... A dazzling and entertaining dialogue between [Frayn] and the reader. Patrick Masterson, Irish Times

Ever since an obscure Civil Servant called Stephen Summerchild fell to his death from a window in the Admiralty, rumours have circulated about a connection with some secret defence project. Now, as a television company reinvestigates the case, the Cabinet Office feels it may be prudent to make a reassessment of its own, in case of any sudden alarm at Number Ten.A Landing on the Sun is not just a masterly novel in its own right, but a clever debunking of those off-the-peg Whitehall yarns ... Many novelists have tried to take the lid off the arcane world of the Civil Service. Frayn has done it as brilliantly and imaginitively as any of them.Daily TelegraphComedy creeps up on A Landing on the Sun like bindweed, transforming what starts out as a thriller into a small masterpiece of the absurd.Financial Times

An unknown place. This was what Michael Frayns children called the shadowy landscape of the past from which their family had emerged. Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, My Fathers Fortune sets out to rediscover that lost land before all trace of it finally disappears beyond recall. As Frayn tries to see it through the eyes of his parents and the others who shaped his life, he comes to realise how little he ever knew or understood about them.This is above all the story of his father, the quick-witted boy from a poor and struggling family, who overcame disadvantages and shouldered many burdens to make a go of his life; who found happiness, had it snatched away from him, and in the end, after many difficulties, perhaps found it again.Father and son were in some ways incredibly alike, in others ridiculously different; and the journey back down the corridors of time is sometimes comic, sometimes painful, as Michael Frayn comes to see how much he has inherited from his father and makes one or two surprising discoveries along the way. Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off,Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

He knows everything about her before they meet; more about her nine novels that she does herself. He has devoted his life to studying and teaching them and yet he is four times as clever as she is. Now, as she steps off the train in London, something about her in the flesh sets him thinking. Maybe he has a chance to resolve the one remaining mystery at the heart of things. . .Through a series of letters sent by a minor English Literature academic to his old friend in Australia, Frayn combines a vivid and moving study of obsession, with a witty and playful account of what its like to be on the fringes of the creative process.Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

A mobile phone is something that gives you the whole world at the touch of your finger - but this book is even better. Magic Mobile is a collection of thirty pre-loaded new text files in a no-fuss, non-digital entertainment system. In a volume that succeeds Matchbox Theatre and Pocket Playhouse, each of these short comic masterpieces displays Michael Frayns unique genius in forever capturing lifes latest absurdities.Tune in to the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Magic Mobile 13 May, 20 May, 27 May, 3 June.Michael Frayns eleven novels include Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong, Spies and Skios. His seventeen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen.

A love affair through an interpreter, said Raya. Thats a very cultured prospect.Raya is a mercurial Moscow blonde who speaks no English, and the affair she is embarking upon is with Gordon Proctor-Gould, a visiting British businessman who speaks no Russian. They need an interpreter; which is how Paul Manning is diverted from writing his thesis at Moscow university to become involved in all the deceptions of love and East-West relations.

Stage Directions covers half a lifetime and the whole range of Frayns theatrical writing, right up to a new piece about his latest play, Afterlife. It is also a reflection on his path into theatre: the doubtful beginnings of his childhood, his subsequent scorn as a young man and, surprisingly late in life, his reluctant conversion. Whatever subjects he tackles, from the exploration of the atomic nucleus to the mechanics of farce, Michael Frayn is never less than fascinating, delightfully funny and charming. This book encapsulates a lifetimes work and is guaranteed to be a firm favourite with his legions of fans around the world.

One of the funniest writers of his generation, Michael Frayn has been writing humorous newspaper columns since 1959, principally for the "Guardian" and "Observer", and originally came to prominence as the thrice weekly purveyor of these short, surreal, razor-sharp explorations of human foibles, sex, politics, manners, and the events of the day. This volume brings together 110 of his finest and funniest pieces from over the years, selected and introduced by Michael Frayn himself, and is an unmissable treat for the many fans of his unique comic voice, as well as a revelation for fans of the award-winning literary novels and plays of his later career.