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  • Published: 3 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9781407007748
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 5 hr 37 min
  • Narrator: Dan Stevens

A Week in December




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

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.

  • Published: 3 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9781407007748
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 5 hr 37 min
  • Narrator: Dan Stevens

About the author

Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks was born in April 1953. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1991, he worked as a journalist. Sebastian Faulks’s books include A Possible Life, Human Traces, On Green Dolphin Street, Engleby, Birdsong, A Week in December and Where My Heart Used to Beat.

Also by Sebastian Faulks

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Praise for A Week in December

Richly entertaining and highly rewarding

Evening Standard

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

Sunday Times

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

Independent

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

Daily Telegraph

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

Spectator

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

Elizabeth Dare, Cath Kidson Magazine

The novel is cleverly plotted and eminently readable

Peter Parker, Sunday Times

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

Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday

Page-turning portrait of noughties' London

Woman & Home

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

Sunday Herald

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

Waterstone's Book Quarterly

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

Nicola Horlick, Evening Standard, Christmas round up

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

The Times

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

Daily Telegraph

Richly entertaining and highly rewarding

Evening Standard

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

Spectator

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

Sunday Times

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

Independent