Product Description

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. First published in 1954, "Lord of the Flies" is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern classics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34650 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

About the Author
William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before he became a schoolmaster he was an actor, a lecturer, a small-boat sailor and a musician. A now rare volume, Poems, appeared in 1934. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and saw action against battleships, submarines and aircraft. He was present at the sinking of the Bismarck. He finished the war as a Lieutenant in command of a rocket ship, which was off the French coast for the D-day invasion, and later at the island of Welcheren. After the war he returned to Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury and was there when his first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954. He gave up teaching in 1961. Lord of the Flies was filmed by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding listed his hobbies as music, chess, sailing, archaeology and classical Greek (which he taught himself). Many of these subjects appear in his essay collections The Hot Gates and A Moving Target. He won the Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died at his home in the summer of 1993. The Double Tongue, a novel left in draft at his death, was published in June 1995. Martin Jarvis, often referred to as the 'wizard of the talking book', is the star of BBC 2's new comedy series, Taking the Flak. His international career encompasses Stargate Atlantis, Numb3rs andMurder She Wrote in America and David Copperfield, Morse, Much Ado and The Bill in Britain. He has starred in many West End and Royal National productions and on Broadway in By Jeeves, winning the Theatre World Award. Films include the multi-Oscar-winning Titanic. His Just William audio recordings are world wide best sellers. He is invested as an OBE for his services to the arts.

Customer Reviews

My bible for GCSE English!!!!!
I am currently studying GCSE English and was looking for a study guide to help me with "Lord of the Flies". I came across this one purely by chance and have never looked back. This book has taken me from not understandng any of the book and its meanings and implications to knowing exactly what things represent. The use of translating the complex language of the book into simple terms was fantastic.

This book is cheap and extremely useful and I would strongly recommend this to anyone studying the book. I originally, before I used this book, wrote and essay and I received a D grade, I then used this book to rewrite the essay and received an A* grade. Thats how well it works.

An excellent book for anyone from "littluns" to "bigguns"...
My English class has just finished reading Lord of the Flies, and the way Golding uses symbolism is amazing! EVERYTHING in this book is a symbol! Golding can see right into mans' evil and destructive nature. He shows us how destructive we can be by setting forests on fire, pushing boulders off cliffs, and childrens' games of throwing sand and rocks at each other. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and definitly recommend it for anyone. Read it! Golding's perspective of us humans is very thought-provoking. By the way...this book does not take place during WW2. Have you ever heard of an ejectable passenger tube on an airplane? No. He wrote it to be some time in the future--anytime actually. But time is not important. If it were a specific time it may not apply to us now in the present, but it does. It can apply to anyone, and that's how he wanted it to be.

It was amazing!
If William Golding was alive today and I had the opportunity of meeting him, I would congratulate him on his amazing novel. The use of symbolism was so extremely explicit and perfectly written, it really made me think about society and where we would be without it. It was a novel which I have read over and over again and I will certainly never forget it as it showed me the origins of mankind and taught me to never, ever take anything for granted. Read and enjoy!