Sebastian Faulks

Dan Stevens

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Fires Which Burned Brightly

Human Traces

Snow Country

The Seventh Son

A Possible Life

Where My Heart Used to Beat

Paris Echo

A Fool's Alphabet

Three Short Lives

The Fatal Englishman

On Green Dolphin Street

Engleby

Birdsong

Girl At The Lion d'Or

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A Week in December

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During times of momentous change, men of letters are driven to produce works that fictionalise the state of the nation, linking individuals with historic events. The 19th century gave us Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Trollope's The Way We Live Now; the 21st has given us Sebastian Faulks's A Week in December

Often edgily satirical, sometimes deeply affecting, A Week in December grasps its headline motifs with the strong and supple hands of a master

Hilarious... The satire is so vicious that at times it's like reading a Tom Sharpe novel

This vast novel, well-plotted and gripping throughout, is the first that Sebastian Faulks has set in our time...the ambition and scope of the book are to be applauded. The conclusion is suitably nail-biting and, pleasingly, love triumphs. Sebastian Faulks has probably got another best-seller on his hands

A zeitgeisty novel about the effects of greed, celebrity, the electronic age and the fragmentation of urban life. It's gripping stuff...sweeping and satirical, A Week in December is a thrilling state-of-the-nation novel

The novel is cleverly plotted and eminently readable

Faulks never writes a hackneyed or lazy sentence, polishing each with care

Page-turning portrait of noughties' London

One can't mistake Faulk's ambition, and his take on the contemporary life is never less than readable

This intriguing book, shaped by modern manners and foibles as much as actions and outcomes, takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of society

The author cleverly brings together the two things that are troubling the nation most - the collapse of the financial system and the threat of terrorism. The book is compelling

Faulks's most vivid character is the odious John Veals, a hedge-fund manager, who relishes all the money that he makes and the power that he quietly exerts... Veals is brilliantly insidious... A thoughtful page-turner... The handsome sunset is heavily, and rightly, weighed down by dark clouds

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Seven Londoners are invited to an opulent dinner party. From a brutal hedge-funder to a lovelorn barrister, a Polish footballer to a pickle magnate, they are defined by the virtual worlds of religious extremism, financial gambling, drugs and internet obsession they inhabit. But it is 2007, the Crash is coming, and all will face a terrible reckoning. 
 
A Week in December is a dazzling and darkly comic state-of-the-nation novel. 
 
'A thoughtful page-turner' THE TIMES 
'Vast, well-plotted and gripping throughout' SPECTATOR 
'Richly entertaining and highly rewarding' EVENING STANDARD 
 
© Sebastian Faulks 2009 (P) Penguin Audio 2009

Powerful contemporary novel set in London from a master of literary fiction.

Sebastian Faulks has written nineteen books, of which A Week in December and The Fatal Englishman were number one in the Sunday Times bestseller lists. He is best known for Birdsong, part of his French trilogy, and Human Traces, the first in an ongoing Austrian trilogy. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a journalist on national papers. He has also written screenplays and has appeared in small roles on stage. He lives in London.

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 
 
London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Seven wintry days to track the lives of seven characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. 
 
With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, and the group is forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit. Sweeping, satirical, Dickensian in scope, A Week in December is a thrilling state of the nation novel from a master of literary fiction.

A Week in December

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