Birdsong

By Sebastian Faulks,

Book cover of Birdsong

Book description

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A mesmerising story of love and war spanning three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the 1990s

In this "overpowering and beautiful novel" (The New Yorker), the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Birdsong as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A brilliant, shocking read but one I’ve read several times, and each time I read it the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped underground leaves me feeling breathless.

Although graphic in places, this is a beautifully written novel that I know I’ll return to time and again. As an author of World War One fiction, I aim to bring a sense of how it felt to be my characters and this book achieves that perfectly as far as I’m concerned.

Heading back further in time to the First World War, this novel is unforgettable and devastating. What starts as a rather sexy story of forbidden love between our English soldier protagonist and a French woman is turned on its head when we are propelled into the barbarity and slaughter of the trenches. Entering our hero’s mind on the night before the Battle of the Somme, and again when the whistles blow at first light, I felt physical sickening shock as I turned the pages, not wishing to continue reading, but unable to stop myself. 

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