William Golding

"El señor de las moscas" es Premio Nobel de Literatura 1983, una fábula moral acerca de la condición humana.Urdida en torno a la situación límite de una treintena de muchachos en una isla desierta, El Señor de las Moscas es una magnifica novela que admite lecturas diferentes e incluso opuestas. En efecto, si algunos pueden ver en esta indagacion de William Golding en la condicion humana la ilustracion de que la agresividad criminal se halla entre los instintos basicos del hombre, otros podran considerarla como una parabola que cuestiona un tipo de educacion represiva que no hace sino incubar explosiones de barbarie prestas a estallar en cuanto los controles se relajan.

Golding''s best-known novel is the story of a group of boys who, after a plane crash, set up a fragile community on a previously uninhabited island. As memories of home recede and the blood from frenzied pig-hunts arouses them, the boys'' childish fear turns into something deeper and more primitive.

Durante la Tercera Guerra Mundial, un grupo de niños evacuados naufraga en una isla desierta de los Mares del Sur y se enfrenta allí con el desafío de reorganizar su vida en común, a partir de cero. Deberan reinventar la sociedad y escoger los mecanismos para vivir en comun. Sus personajes principales son alegorias de los diferentes aspectos de la humanidad: Piggy, gordito y asmatico, es el representante de la sensatez y el sentido comun; Ralph es el defensor del orden y la civilizacion; Jack es el fanatico y cabecilla de una horda de niños-cazadores, fascinados por la barbarie; Roger representa la crueldad y el sadismo sin limites; Simon encarna la bondad natural de la humanidad... Durante el dia, exploran las playas deslumbrantes y paradisiacas. Pero por la noche son atemorizados por pesadillas de una bestia primitiva. Huerfanos de la sociedad, añoran todo lo que han perdido y deben forjar su propia manera de vivir; pero muy pronto el grupo se divide y sus inocentes juegos adquieren un giro peligroso. La aventura esta servida.Celebrando el 70 aniversario de la publicacion de El Señor de las Moscas, de William Golding, Aimee de Jongh firma el guion y las ilustraciones de la primera adaptacion, completa y a todo color, de un clasico de la literatura universal que representa de forma magistral la lucha de la civilizacion contra la barbarie y la perdida de la inocencia infantil.

Esta inquietante fábula moral, acerca de la condición humana, narra la historia de un grupo de jóvenes y niños que queda varado en una isla desierta tras un accidente de avión. Estos chicos pronto se veran expuestos a situaciones de aislamiento extremo. Asi, y a tientas, intentaran organizarse para sobrevivir y convivir de forma pacifica, lo que se volvera imposible en cuanto los mas abyectos instintos humanos se manifiesten con una fuerza inusitada. El Señor de las Moscas es un clasico contemporaneo y la obra maestra de su autor, William Golding, ganador del Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1983. Esta edicion cuenta con una renovada traduccion de Martin Schifino y con las ilustraciones del virtuoso artista argentino Jorge Gonzalez, que transitan desde el bucolismo dictado por la naturaleza hasta la pavorosa incertidumbre que provoca la inocencia.

Una treintena de muchachos son los únicos supervivientes de un naufragio en el que perecen todos los adultos que consiguen llegar a una isla. Enseguida se plantea cómo sobrevivir en tales condiciones, y no tardan en creaser dos grupos con sus respectivos lideres. Ralph se convierte en el cabecilla de los que estan dispuestos a recolectar y a construir refugios, mientras Jack se convierte en el jefe de los cazadores, animados por un espiritu aventurero. Las tensiones entre ambos bandos no tardan en aparecer.Partiendo de este esquema, el Premio Nobel William Golding crea una fabula moral sobre el lado mas oscuro de la naturaleza humana. Una novela deslumbrante en la que se ha visto desde una requisitoria moral contra la educacion represiva hasta una parabola acerca de los instintos basicos del ser humano.William Golding (1911-1993) trastoco por completo el panorama literario de su tiempo con la publicacion de El señor de las moscas (1954), que se convirtio de inmediato en un espectacular exito internacional y se erigio en muy poco tiempo en todo un clasico contemporaneo. Posteriormente publico las novelas Los herederos (1955), Martin el naufrago (1956), Caida libre (1959) y Ritos de paso (1980), entre otras. Es autor ademas de algunas obras teatrales y un volumen de poemas.

This dystopian classic is 'exciting, relevant and thought-provoking' (Stephen King). When a group of schoolboys are stranded on a desert island, what could go wrong? ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD' 'The first book with hands - strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, 'This is not just entertainment; it's life or death.' ... I've been thinking about it ever since, for fifty years and more.' Stephen King 'One of my favorite books - I read it every couple of years.' Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What's grown-ups going to think? Going off-hunting pigs-letting fires out-and now! A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of schoolboys. By day, they explore the dazzling beaches, gorging fruit, seeking shelter, and ripping off their uniforms to swim in the lagoon. At night, in the darkness of the jungle, they are haunted by nightmares of a primitive beast. Orphaned by society, they must forge their own; but it isn't long before their innocent games devolve into a murderous hunt ... 'Thrills me with all the power a fiction can have ... Exemplary.' Ian McEwan 'An existential fable backlit with death's incandescent glare.' Ben Okri 'Violently real ... An apocalyptic novelist [who writes with] humanist rage and defiance.' Marlon James 'Beautiful and desperate, something quite out of the ordinary.' Stevie Smith 'Beautifully written, tragic and provocative.' E. M. Forster 'A fragment of nightmare.' New Statesman 'A post-apocalyptic, dystopian survivor-fantasy ... [A novel] for all time ... A cult classic.' Guardian 'Stands out mightily in my memory ... Such a strong statement about the human heart.' Patricia Cornwell 'Terrifying and haunting.' Kingsley Amis What readers are saying: 'Every real human being should read this ... This is what we are.' 'It's brilliant, it's captivating, it's thought provoking and brutal and for some, its truly terrifying.' 'It can be read and re-read many times, and every time something new will appear.' 'There is a reason why this is studied at school ... Excellent read.' 'This is one of the few books I've read that I keep on my Kindle to read again.' 'I revisit this every few years and it's always fresh and impressive ... One of the best books I've ever read.'

Las novelas de Golding exponen a sus protagonistas a situaciones de aislamiento extremo, tanto físico como espiritual; así se encontrarán con los instintos más oscurosy, como en El señor de las moscas, con las leyes primordiales de la existencia y la convivencia, sustentadas, no pocas veces, en la aniquilacion del contrario.William Golding destaca por su examen profundo del comportamiento de personajes que ya no obedecen a las convenciones de la civilizacion, y cuya conducta los lleva a un conflicto entre fuerzas del bien y del mal.Las ilustraciones del virtuoso artista argentino Jorge Gonzalez transitan desde el bucolismo dictado por la naturaleza a la pavorosa incertidumbre a que da lugar la inocencia.

" Et si j'écrivais l'histoire de jeunes garçons sur une île ? Je les laisserais se comporter exactement comme ils voudraient. " William Golding a relevé ce défi, et voici nos collégiens anglais " sans grandes personnes " sur une île déserte du Pacifique. C'est l'aventure, c'est la liberté - serait-ce le paradis ?.

Lose yourself in ancient civilizations in these three historical novellas by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies. Even when he leapt from the parapet he talked. Ancient Egypt. The Prince is set to marry Pretty Flower, his sister, in the Great Houses incestuous society. But the Liar speaks a truth that transforms everything . A primitive matriarchal society. While mothers raise children in the bucolic Place of Women, Chimp is tormented by the Leopard Men in their brutal hunts, until he gains new wisdom .Imperial Rome. In an era of invention and exploration, the emperor realises he loves his illegitimate grandson more than his own loutish heir .Communicates visionary ideas about the present and his imaginative understanding of our collective pasts. Bettany HughesGolding writes the past as present [with] uncanny skill and tremendous intuition.Ben OkriBrilliant . So fluent and stylish that the stories read themselves like a dream.Daily TelegraphIngenious ... Perhaps the ambition of these books seems to put them a bit over the top, a bit out of their time.London Review of Books

Experience a shipwrecked sailors psychic disintegration into a naked madman on a rock by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies. An hour on this rock is a lifetime.Glistening limpets. The claws of a lobster. Wild tangles of seaweed. Slowly, his eyes open. Everywhere, there is sea. Only this jagged peak interrupts the vast expanse of the Atlantic: a tooth in a gaping jaw. But he will survive. Rainwater can be drunk; anemones eaten. He dries his oilskin beneath the screaming gulls, and discovers his papers: Christopher Hadley Martin, TY. Lieut., R.N.V.R. Weathering lightning strikes of memory, he must now reconstruct his fate - piece by terrible piece.Devastating ... Violently real ... The unique kind of novel that compels you to reread it.Marlon JamesWizardry of the first order.ObserverTerrifying . Magnificently original. Sylvia PlathAn amazing tour de force ... A blow-by-blow struggle for survival. Stephen SpenderImmense ... To read it is to undergo a shattering and memorable experience.Kingsley AmisA master fabulist ... An iconoclast.John Fowles

Join an eccentric novelist on the run from his obsessive would-be biographer in this comic farce by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies.Why should I conceal the fact that I had found a full professor of Eng. Lit. rifling my dustbin?Fame, fortune, alcoholism, a failing marriage: for novelist Wilfred Barclay, his final unbearable irritation is his would-be-biographer, the young academic Professor Rick L. Tucker, who is determined to become The Barclay Man.Locked in a lethal relationship, the two men stumble across Europe, shedding wives, self-respect and identities in a game of literary cat and mouse - and the climax of their odyssey, when it comes, is as inevitable as it is unexpected . . .A complex literary comedy from an extraordinarily powerful writer, which holds us right through to the end. Malcolm BradburyRich as a compost heap . . . It moves you and at times it can shake you. Melvyn Bragg[Goldings] splendid comic gift is used to often hilarious effect, running the whole gamut of comedy, from irony to farce . . . Hugely enjoyable. Daily Telegraph

A first-hand journal about the Goldings travels through Egypt, soon after winning the Nobel Prize, living on a motor cruiser on the Nile. Nothing went quite as planned, but William Goldings vivid and honest account of what actually happened, and of what he saw and felt about ancient Egypt and the exasperations of the living present, will delight his innumerable admirers and everyone who visits Egypt.One of the funniest anti-travel books I have ever read.Daily TelegraphNo previous book brings you so close to Golding the man. It bulges with abstruse knowledge . . . and is often screamingly funny . . . Hugely enjoyable.The Times

Commissioned by the leading actor Alastair Sim (1900-1976) The Brass Butterfly was Goldings only original stage play. Starring Sim himself, and also the popular actor George Cole, it opened for a provincial pre-West End run in Oxford in early 1958 and premiered at the Strand Theatre in London in April. In his biography of Golding, John Carey describes it as a comic scherzo dealing with the conflict between science and religion, transposed to the Greco-Roman world of antiquity.

Introduced by Kate Mosse, lose yourself in an epic naval journey in the final novel in the Booker Prize-winning historical fiction Sea Trilogy by the author of Lord of the Flies. I think there has been death in my hands.On the last stretch of its epic voyage from England to Australia, a disintegrating warship inches towards land. But there are still trials ahead, as the vessel is smashed against an ice cliff and blasted by a great storm, while the claustrophobic passengers battle erotic desires, masculine rivalry and violent power struggles - all experiencing a sea change in their natures. And when an unseen fire begins to smoulder below decks, the other side of the world has never seemed further away ...Fantastic ... Gems tumble off the pages ... A strong sense of drama ... Much of the pleasure of reading his work is his original imagery. Annie ProulxA truly noble achievement. Patrick OBrienThe best novel Ive read this year ... The language fizzes and spits.Daily TelegraphReeks and resounds with authenticity ... The epic imaginative enterprise [is] as formidable a feat as the year-long odyssey it charts.Sunday TimesGolding writes the past as present [with] uncanny skill and tremendous intuition. Ben OkriTo The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy - Book Three

Lose yourself in an epic naval journey in the second novel in the Booker Prize-winning historical fiction Sea Trilogy by the author of Lord of the Flies. This tropical nowhere was the whole world - the whole imaginable world.A decrepit warship is becalmed halfway to Australia, stilled in an ocean wilderness of heat and sea mists. In this surreal, fete-like atmosphere, a ball is held with a passing ship: the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them seaweed like green hair spreads omniously over the hull. Half-mad with fear, drink, love and opium, both vessel and passengers feel themselves going to pieces: and the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship comes apart at the seams . . .Fantastic ... Gems tumble off the pages ... A strong sense of drama ... Much of the pleasure of reading his work is his original imagery. Annie ProulxNo living writer has represented the fragility of mans experience so marvellously as Golding. AS ByattIt is in Goldings magnificent, therapeutic, terrifying descriptions of seascapes that the deepest meanings can be found. Kate MosseStunning . . . As exciting as any thriller.Sunday TimesA feat of imaginative reconstruction, as vivid as a dream.Daily MailTells an utterly absorbing tale, in language of immense force and subtlety.Financial TimesTo The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy - Book Two