Faber & Faber

Formed as a New York City hardcore band in 1981, Beastie Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip hop superstardom. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. Adam “AD-ROCK” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage […]

In virtually all areas of Dylan’s life – his immigrant antecedents, his business dealings, his various addictions and his romantic attachments – Heylin is able to provide a fascinating picture of a man who changed the whole course of popular music in the sixties and, over thirty years later, won three Grammys. Heylin has given […]

Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them on tour…..

The shadow of a tree in upstate New York. A hotel room in Switzerland. A young stranger in the Congo. In Blind Spot, readers will follow Teju Cole’s inimitable artistic vision into the visual realm, as he continues to refine the voice and intellectual obsessions that earned him such acclaim for Open City. In more […]

The book begins in Berkeley in 1968, and ends with a piece on Dylan’s show at the University of Minnesota on election night 2008. In between are moments of euphoric discovery: from Marcus’…..

A celebration of bookshops around the world, by an award-winning cast of writers including Ali Smith, Pankaj Mishra, Elif Shafak and Daniel Kehlmann In Browse Henry Hitchings asks fifteen writers from around the world to consider the bookshops that have shaped them; each conjures a specific time and place. Ali Smith chronicles the secrets and […]

In 2004, on the back of the international success of Blankets, Craig Thompson set out on a tour across Europe and Morocco, promoting foreign editions of his book and researching his next project. Carnet de Voyage is the gorgeous sketchbook diary of these travels. From wandering around Paris and Barcelona between events, to navigating markets […]

Che Guevara’s legend is unmatched in the modern world. Since his assassination in 1967 at the age of 39, the Argentine revolutionary has become an internationally famed icon, as revered as he is controversial. A Marxist ideologue, he sought to end global inequality by bringing down the American capitalist empire through armed guerrilla warfare – […]

In 1970, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn’t play an instrument and she’d never seen a girl play electric guitar……

The latest collectable edition of Paul Auster’s fiction. This volume of Paul Auster’s collected novels includes Travels in the Scriptorium, Man in the Dark, Invisible and Sunset Park.

MOSCOW, July 1987. Real-estate tycoon Donald Trump visits Soviet Russia for the first time at the invitation of the government. LONDON, December 2016. Luke Harding meets former MI6 officer Christopher Steele to discuss the president-elect’s connections with Russia. Harding follows two leads; money and sex. WASHINGTON, January 2017. Steele’s explosive dossier alleges that the Kremlin […]

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and darkly observant. A college student in Dublin and aspiring writer, she works at a literary agency by day. At night, she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are profiled by Melissa, a well-known journalist, they enter an exotic […]

“Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on for ever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing […]

Dig If U Will The Picture is a portrait of The Artist who will be remembered by many as the most seductive and enigmatic pop star of his generation. A year after Prince’s death at the age of 57, acclaimed writer Ben Greenman brilliantly anatomizes the star’s dramatic career and an aesthetic that at times […]

This is the story of Dunkirk and of the men who planned it (insofar as it was planned) and of the men who carried it out, and of their ships. Mr Divine, who was himself with the small boats, writes with the authority of direct knowledge. He had the assistance of the men who were […]

Award-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Jon Savage’s definitive history of punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and their time: the late 1970s. ‘One of Britain’s most trusted cultural historians.’ THE FACE A pop-culture classic full of anecdote, insight and exclusive interviews, England’s Dreaming tells the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid decline of […]

From a youthful infatuation with a cabinet maker in a small Italian fishing village, to a passionate yet sporadic affair with a woman in New York, to an obsession with a man he meets at a tennis court, Enigma Variations charts one man’s path through the great loves of his life. Paul’s intense desires, losses […]

This is the story of one of the world’s great publishers told in its own words. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished letters, minutes, memoirs and diaries, Toby Faber takes us deep inside the evolution of the company and the excitement, hopes and fears of the people who published and wrote the books that […]

In 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn’t play an instrument and she’d never seen a girl play electric guitar. A year later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-girl band the Slits, who fearlessly took on the […]

No other jazz musician has proved so inspirational and so fascinating as John Coltrane. Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times, has written the first book to do justice to this great and controversial music pioneer. As well as an elegant narrative of Coltrane’s life Ratliff does something incredibly valuable – he writes […]

Rob Young investigates how the idea of folk has been handed down and transformed by successive generations – song collectors, composers, Marxist revivalists, folk-rockers, psychedelic voyagers, free festival-goers, experimental pop stars and electronic innovators. In a sweeping panorama of Albion’s soundscape that takes in the pioneer spirit of Cecil Sharp; the pastoral classicism of Ralph […]

In his critically acclaimed book, In the Country of Country, Nicholas Dawidoff travels to the origins of country music and talks to the musicians who created this original American art form. Here, amongst others, are indelible portraits of Johnny Cash, behind whose black apparel lies a Faustian dilemma; Merle Haggard, a man as elusive as […]

Re-make/Re-model tells the little known and fascinating story of the individuals and circumstances which combined to form the groundbreaking band Roxy Music — how the art school avant-garde of the 1960s met the sweat, luck and attitude of chart-topping pop. Written with the co-operation of all of those involved, including Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Andy […]

Syd Barrett was the lead guitarist, vocalist, and principle songwriter in the original line up of Pink Floyd. During his brief time with the band (1966-68) he was the driving force behind the unit. After he left the band he made just two further solo albums which were both released in 1970, before withdrawing from […]

Disco emerged from the fall-out of the Black Power Movement and an almost exclusively gay scene in a blaze of poppers, strobe lights, tight trousers, hysterical diva vocals and synthesized beats in the late sixties. As a genre, disco radically re-defined the sensibility of the seventies to the extent where reactionary rockers felt the need […]

In Girl in a Band Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth and role model for a generation of women, tells her story. She writes frankly about her route from girl to woman and pioneering icon within the music and art scene of New York City in the 1980s and 90s as well as marriage, […]

Spanning Tom Waits’ extraordinary 40-year career, from Closing Time to Orphans, Lowside of the Road is Barney Hoskyns’ unique take on one of rock’s great enigmas. Like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Waits is a chameleonic survivor who’s achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. From his perilous “jazzbo” years in ’70s Los […]

In this, the first book to take a big-picture view of the entire post punk period, acclaimed author and music journalist Simon Reynolds recreates a time of tremendous urgency and idealism in pop music. Full of anecdote and insight, and featuring the likes of Joy Division, The Fall, Pere Ubu, PiL and Talking Heads, Rip […]

In The Dark Stuff Nick Kent profiles twenty-two of the most gifted and self-destructive talents in rock history. From Brian Wilson to Syd Barrett, the Rolling Stones to Neil Young, Iggy Pop to Lou Reed, he offers intimate portraits that are unimaginable in the world of today’s market driven music business. A new edition as […]

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Between his second and third tours of duty, a soldier returns home. To his former home, that is, using an old key while the new tenant is at work. Is he […]

Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like ‘guilt, and guilt, and guilt’: these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom. ‘But what is the ninth kingdom?’ she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. ‘It is […]

My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the […]

Adrienne is living in a puritanical age, when the best compliment a childless woman can get is: ‘You’d make a terrific mother’. That’s when she goes to her friends’ Labor Day picnic and accidentally kills their baby. The shock of this scene is expertly packed into two brief paragraphs. What follows is Adrienne’s retreat from […]

Seamus Heaney was ‘the greatest poet of our age’ (Guardian). From his remarkable debut in 1966, he pioneered the poetry of our times across five decades of cultural and political change, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Field Work, his fifth volume, from 1979, is a collection of poems that were […]

In this spellbinding new exploration of the varieties of love, the author of Call Me by Your Name lets us back into his characters’ lives years after their first meeting In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, now a gifted classical pianist. A chance […]

In this spellbinding new exploration of the varieties of love, the author of Call Me by Your Name lets us back into his characters’ lives years after their first meeting In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, now a gifted classical pianist. A chance […]

Peggy Seeger is one of folk music’s most influential artists and songwriters. Born in New York City in 1935, she enjoyed a childhood steeped in music and left-wing politics – they remain her lifeblood

One anonymous football fan. 18.6 million confidential documents. This is the explosive story of the biggest leak in sporting history – and the shady underworld of modern football. In 2016, a whistle-blower known only as ‘John’ started to leak a treasure trove of top-secret files to German newspaper Der Spiegel. These documents reveal the clandestine […]

Sammy and his three friends live in the Ardoyne, an impoverished, predominantly Catholic area of North Belfast that has become the epicentre of a country intent on cannibalising itself. They love sharp clothes, a good drink, and the songs of Perry Como – whose commitment to clean living holds up a dissonant mirror to their […]

We arrived in a fleet of white stretch limos at a clearing in a wood near Woking. Here the K Foundation was exhibiting a million pounds in cash, while Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty circled the perimeter in two orange Saracen armoured vehicles, blasting out Abba’s ‘Money Money Money’ . . . The list of […]

CLOSE YOUR EYES I invite you to imagine a plan for a new and better society where everything is very coherent and makes a lot of sense and nothing is confusing or awful OPEN YOUR EYES No need to imagine. Here is the plan. The plan is illustrated. The plan is quite complicated. But not […]

Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship…..

Mike Love is a founding member of the Beach Boys and the lead singer and lyricist of their biggest hits. With their lush vocals and endlessly inventive arrangements, the band forged art from songs about cars, surfing and first love. But beneath the Beach Boys’ wholesome appearance lurked darker truths: drugs and dissent, deceit and […]

Once upon a time there was a crow, a fairly famous Crow, who wanted nothing more than to care for a pair of motherless children… In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother’s sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning […]

Here She Comes Now brings together some of America’s best music writers – such as Susan Choi, recipient of the inaugural PEN / W.G. Sebald award, Daniel Walters, whose credits include the screenplay for Heathers, and Alina Simon, whose novel Note to Self was described as ‘hilarious’ by Amanda Palmer – to explore incredible women […]

Kate Bush is a true iconoclast and one of the most revered contemporary musical artists of recent years. Since her emergence in 1978 she has forged a creative path which has proved to be both highly innovative and hugely inspiring. Her artistic achievements have helped shape our cultural landscape and her singular vision has influenced […]

In 1999, Underworld’s Karl Hyde began writing a public diary. Every day since then, Hyde has documented his thoughts, lyrical works-in-progress, poetry and biographical essays alongside ‘found’ visuals. For the last sixteen years, these entries have collectively created an on-going, utterly unique monologue on Underworld’s website. I Am Dogboy handpicks a selection of diary entries […]

Fifteen-year-old Syd feels totally out of place. She’s skinny but not ‘hot-skinny’, she’s dealing with the death of her father in silence, and her best friend (who Syd is really in love with) is dating a homophobic bully. Syd’s guidance counselor gives her a diary in which to vent her frustration, but Syd has another […]

The haunting true story of the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California during the 70s and 80s, and of the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case—which was solved in April 2018. Introduction by Gillian Flynn • Afterword by Patton Oswalt “A brilliant genre-buster…. Propulsive, can’t-stop-now reading.”   —Stephen King For more than ten years, […]

Out of print for several years, a comprehensive volume of Lou Reed’s lyrics, now updated in a new text design to include the lyrics from his final album with Metallica, Lulu. Through his many incarnations-from proto punk to glam rocker to elder statesman of the avant garde Lou Reed’s work has maintained an undeniable vividness […]

Keep ‘Er Lit is the second volume of Van Morrison’s collected lyrics containing one hundred and twenty songs from across his storied career. It contains love songs, work songs, songs about the pains and anxieties of existence, songs of consolation, songs about various kinds of spiritual quest and the realms of the mystical, and songs […]

‘Adrian Tomine can draw, think, write and feel. He sees everything, he knows everything; he’s in your apartment, he’s on the subway, he’s in your dreams … He has more ideas in twenty panels than novelists have in a lifetime.’ -Zadie Smith   In his first full-length work since Shortcomings in 2007, and working with […]

Not far from London, there is a village. This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England’s mysterious past and its confounding present. It belongs to Mad Pete, the grizzled artist. To ancient Peggy, gossiping at her gate. To […]

Through his pioneering work in the legendary country-punk band, Uncle Tu- pelo, to his enduring legacy as the creative force behind the unclassifiable sound of Wilco, Jeff Tweedy has weaved his way between the underground and the mainstream – and back again. Funny, disarming, and deeply honest, his memoir casts light on his unique creative […]

Through his pioneering work in the legendary country-punk band, Uncle Tu- pelo, to his enduring legacy as the creative force behind the unclassifiable sound of Wilco, Jeff Tweedy has weaved his way between the underground and the mainstream – and back again. Funny, disarming, and deeply honest, his memoir casts light on his unique creative […]

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was one of the writers that defined the course of twentieth-century poetry. Her vivid, daring and complex poetry continues to captivate new generations of readers and writers. In the Letters, we discover the art of Plath’s correspondence, most of which has never before been published and is here presented unabridged, without revision, […]

The second volume of this landmark edition of Sylvia Plath’s correspondence. This selection of later correspondence witnesses Plath and Hughes becoming major, influential contemporary writers, as it happened. Experiences recorded include first books and other publications; teaching; committing to writing full-time; travels; making professional acquaintances; settling in England; starting a family; and buying a house. […]

Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn’t know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in….

In Mars By 1980, David Stubbs charts the evolution of electronic music from the earliest mechanical experiments in the late nineteenth century, through to the familiar sounds of electronica, house and techno that we know today. It’s a tale of mavericks and future dreamers overcoming Luddite resistance, malfunctioning devices, and sonic mayhem. The be- ginnings […]

In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with