William Golding Livres

Une bande de garçons de six à douze ans se trouve jetée par un naufrage sur une île déserte montagneuse, où poussent des arbres tropicaux et gîtent des animaux sauvages. L'aventure apparaît d'abord aux enfants comme de merveilleuses vacances. On peut se nourrir de fruits, se baigner, jouer à Robinson. Mais il faut s'organiser. Suivant les meilleures traditions des collèges anglais, on élit un chef. C'est Ralph, qui s'entoure de Porcinet, «l'intellectuel» un peu ridicule, et de Simon. Mais bientôt un rival de Ralph se porte à la tête d'une bande rivale, et la bagarre entre les deux bandes devient rapidement si grave que Simon et Porcinet sont tués. Ralph échappe de justesse, sauvé par l'arrivée des adultes. Ce roman remarquable a un sens allégorique qu'il n'est pas difficile de comprendre : c'est l'aventure des sociétés humaines qui est tragiquement mise en scène par les enfants. Mais l'œuvre vaut avant tout par la description de leur comportement et par l'atmosphère de joie, de mystère et d'effroi qui la baigne.

As spring arrives, the remaining people return from the sea, but they encounter terrifying and unprecedented events. Unbeknownst to them, their time as a people is already coming to an end.

An illuminating collection of essays and lectures by the winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature. It is about places as diverse as Wiltshire, where the author lived for over half a century, Dutch waterways, Delphi, Egypt ancient and modern, and planet Earth herself. It also includes his Nobel Speech.

The story begins with a plane crash that leaves a group of children stranded on a deserted island, initially leading to innocent play and exploration. However, as time passes, their games take a dark turn, revealing the underlying savagery and primal instincts that emerge in the absence of adult supervision. The narrative explores themes of civilization versus savagery, the loss of innocence, and the inherent darkness within humanity.

This novel completes Golding's trilogy, begun with "Rites of Passage" and continued with "Close Quarters". The author won the Booker Prize for "Rites of Passage" and was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1983.

Sea novels set in the early nineteenth century.__

In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fecirc;te-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull. The sequel to Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, the second volume in Golding's acclaimed sea trilogy, is imbued with his extraordinary sense of menace. Half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium, everyone on this leaky, unsound hulk is 'going to pieces'. And in a nightmarish climax the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship begins to come apart at the seams.

A short novel, left in draft form when the author died suddenly in 1993. Portraying a woman's experience - something rare in Golding's oeuvre - the story features one of his finest creations, Arieka the Pythia.

"I was standing up, pressed back against the wall, trying not to breathe. I got there in the one movement my body made. My body had many hairs on legs and belly and chest and head, and each had its own life; each inherited a hundred thousand years of loathing and fear for things that scuttle or slide or crawl." from Free Fall Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War II, he is taken as a prisoner-of-war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell like Lazarus from the tomb, seeing infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. Transfigured by his ordeal, he begins to realize what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. He determines to find the exact point at which the accumulated weight of those choices has deprived him of free will.