Faulks on Fiction (Includes 2 Vintage Classics): Great British Villains and the Secret Life of the Novel

Apr 21, 2025 5:21 AM

Author:Sebastian Faulks

The publication of Robinson Crusoe in London in 1719 marked the arrival of a revolutionary art form: the novel. British writers were prominent in shaping the new type of storytelling - one which reflected the experiences of ordinary people, with characters in whom readers could find not only an escape, but a deeper understanding of their own lives.

But the novel was more than just a reflection of British life. As Sebastian Faulks explains in this engaging literary and social history, it also helped invent the British. By focusing not on writers but on the people they gave us, Faulks not only celebrates the recently neglected act of novelistic creation but shows how the most enduring fictional characters over the centuries have helped map the British psyche. In this ebook, Sebastian celebrates the greatest villains in fiction - from Fagin to Barbara Covett.

Also included are two classic novels:

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist, born into tragedy, runs away to London with the naive hope for a brighter future. In this classic, Dickens graphically conjures up the capital's underworld, full of prostitutes, thieves and lost and homeless children.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: Marian and her sister Laura live a quiet life under their uncle's guardianship until Laura's marriage to Sir Percival Glyde, a man of many secrets. Can she be protected from a mysterious and potentially fatal plot?

Reviews

Quite brilliant, inspiring for the layman and an enviable tour de force for the informed reader ... A wonderful book ... lucid, exciting and easy to read

—— Literary Review

Ferguson constructs an entire scenario starting with Charles I's defeat of the Covenanters, running through three revolutions that did not happen and climaxing with the collapse of the West, ruled by an Anglo-American empire, in the face of a mighty transcontinental, tsarist Russian imperium ... A welcome, optimistic assault on an intellectual heresy

—— Sunday Times

A talented and imaginative team who tackle with counterfactual verve a series of turning points

—— Daily Telegraph

No bleaker picture exists of the fate of Chinese female infants...than Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

—— Spectator

Harrowing and heartbreaking yet important tales

—— SHE Magazine

I was stunned and moved more than I can say

—— Gavin Elser , Sunday Herald, Christmas round up

A compelling and affecting saga that resonates long after the reading. Montefiore's depiction of the epoch is superb. The language is precise and evocative without getting in the way of the storyline. Its evocation of 20th Century Russia is so intoxicating it made want to buy a plane ticket and find out more for myself. I can't remember being as moved by the fate of a character in a novel for some time

—— SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, Australia

A must read! Montefiore polishes all the facets of a good story - secrets, lies, betrayal, love and death - and places them in Russia's grand setting

—— THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, New Zealand

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—— DAILY EXPRESS

This completely addictive story offers an authoratative insight into Stalin's USSR and, in its huge characters and epic ambition, carries echoes of Tolstoy himself

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A heartbreaking tale of passion, betrayal and an unthinkable decision

—— IN STYLE

A compelling novel of passions and secrets, politics and lies, love and betrayal, savagery and survival

—— SAGA

Sweeping historical epic about a daring young woman forced to make a hard choice in Stalinist Russia

—— OBSERVER TOP FIVE SUMMER READS OF 2008

Excellent... the historical detail is strong. The characterisation is superb, with Sashenka being especially well drawn. With her unwanted beauty and charisma, her gentle nobility that transcends class or wealth and her earnest ideals which eventually cost her so much. Sashenka commands out total sympathy, and when she is forced apart from her children, the sadness is profound and hard to dispel. A powerful novel... with a heroine who lingers in the mind when the story is finished

—— SPECTATOR

Sashenka is grand in scale, rich in historical research, and yet never loses the flow of an addictive, racy, well-wrought plot. It combines a moving, satisfyingly just-neat-enough finale with a warning - that history has an awful habit of repeating itself

—— THE SCOTSMAN

An epic novel... The suspense lasts until the final pages. There is no let-up. At the end of the book, you really feel that even though Sashenka is a fictional character, she has become one of the thousands of real people who haunt the Moscow archives that Montefiore knows so well

—— SUNDAY EXPRESS

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