A Possible Life

An exhilarating, multi-layered narrative that explores love, loss and what makes us human, from the bestselling author of A Week in December and Birdsong.

Terrified, a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes and pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire. Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse, a father is too ashamed to acknowledge his son. A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends shivers through the skull. Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians risk their bodies and hearts in search of connection – some key to understanding what makes us the people we become.

Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks’s dazzling novel journeys across continents and time to explore the chaos created by love, separation and missed opportunities. From the pain and drama of these highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation: the chance to feel your heart beat in someone else’s life.

Click here to watch a video of Sebastian Faulks introducing A Possible Life

"Intense, moving and sometimes harrowing work of fiction makes for an absorbing read."
- Artsmart.co.za

“Though each section may constitute a story in its own right, the parts work together to produce a valuable reflection on lost opportunities and second chances in which Faulks’ characters are connected by their innate humanness, the tendency to respond with emotion and not reason.”
- Business Day

"The meaning of the life is the theme through-out the book - it suggests human life is more than just a random amalgamation of atoms, to be snuffed out at death."
- You magazine