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A Possible Life

Published
Dec 2012
Main Genre
General Fiction General Fiction
Rating
Pages
304

About This Book

From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of Birdsong, new fiction about love and war—five transporting stories and five unforgettable lives, linked across centuries.

In Second World War Poland, a young prisoner closes his eyes and pictures going to bat on a sunlit English cricket ground.

Across the yard of a Victorian poorhouse, a man is too ashamed to acknowledge the son he gave away.

In a 19th-century French village, an old servant understands—suddenly and with awe—the meaning of the Bible story her master is reading to her.

On a summer evening in the Catskills in 1971, a skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar and with a song that will send shivers through her listeners' skulls.

A few years from now, in Italy, a gifted scientist discovers links between time and the human brain and between her lover's novel and his life.

Throughout the five masterpieces of fiction that make up A Possible Life, exquisitely drawn and unforgettable characters risk their bodies, hearts and minds in pursuit of the manna of human connection. Between soldier and lover, parent and child, servant and master, and artist and muse, important pleasures and pains are born of love, separations and missed opportunities. These interactions—whether successful or not—also affect the long trajectories of characters' lives.

Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks's dazzling new novel journeys across continents and centuries not only to entertain with superb old-fashioned storytelling but to show that occasions of understanding between humans are the one thing that defines us—and that those moments, however fluid, are the one thing that endures.

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Paperback

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Trade Paperback
Dec 2013 Picador ISBN 1250037859
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Sep 2012 Random House ISBN 0091936810
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Sep 2013 Random House - Australia ISBN 0099549220
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Sep 2013 Anchor (Canada) ISBN 0385678983
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Hardcover

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First Edition Dec 2012 Henry Holt ISBN 0805097309
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Sep 2012 Doubleday (Canada) ISBN 0385678967
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eBook

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Dec 2012 Henry Holt ISBN 0805097317
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Dec 2012 Vintage ISBN 1448192102
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Dec 2012 Henry Holt and Co. ISBN B008E7AD1M
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Mar 2024 Penguin ISBN 1804944122
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Audio

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Sep 2012 William Heinemann (UK) ISBN 1846573645
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Sep 2012 Random House Audiobooks ISBN B009A2UZZE
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MP3 CD
Dec 2012 Dreamscape Media ISBN 1624061699
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Dec 2012 Dreamscape Media, LLC ISBN B00AM357RQ
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Audio CD
Dec 2012 Dreamscape Media ISBN 1624061656
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Large Print

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Hardcover
Feb 2013 Center Point ISBN 1611736722
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