Sebastian Faulks Books in Order: Complete Bibliography & Best Starting Points
Sebastian Faulks's complete bibliography in order — from Birdsong and Charlotte Gray to A Week in December. Best starting points for new readers.
Sebastian Faulks (b. 1953) is one of the most commercially successful and critically respected British novelists of his generation. Birdsong (1993) — his novel of the First World War — is among the best-selling literary novels in British publishing history and has remained continuously in print since publication. His fiction is characterised by its emotional directness, its historical research, and its sympathy for characters caught in extreme circumstances.
He worked as a literary journalist before his first novel was published; he has also written as James Bond continuation author (Devil May Care, 2008) and has published nonfiction on psychiatry and mental illness.
Where to Start
Birdsong (1993)
The essential starting point — Stephen Wraysford’s experiences in the tunnels and trenches of the Western Front, and the love affair that preceded the war. Faulks’s account of the Somme and the underground warfare beneath it is the most sustained and emotionally powerful British fictional engagement with the First World War since Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. The alternating structure — pre-war France, the trenches, the modern day — creates a sustained meditation on memory and the relationship between past and present.
Charlotte Gray (1998)
The essential second novel — a Scottish woman’s transformation in occupied France. The novel is simultaneously a love story, a portrait of collaboration and resistance, and a study of identity under pressure. Faulks’s research into the French deportation of Jews is meticulous; the novel’s emotional climax involves one of the most devastating historical realities of the occupation.
A Week in December (2009)
Faulks’s most contemporary novel — a week in London’s financial world just before the 2008 crash. The novel follows seven characters across a single week, including a hedge fund manager, a newly arrived immigrant, a professional footballer’s wife, and a young man radicalised online. The most ambitious of Faulks’s London novels and a useful corrective to the view that he can only write about the distant past.
Complete Bibliography (Major Works)
| Title | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The Girl at the Lion d’Or | 1989 | France; 1930s |
| A Fool’s Alphabet | 1992 | Love story; peripatetic structure |
| Birdsong | 1993 | WWI; best starting; essential |
| The Fatal Englishman | 1996 | Biography; three lives |
| Charlotte Gray | 1998 | WWII France; Resistance |
| On Green Dolphin Street | 2001 | 1960 Washington; love story |
| Human Traces | 2005 | Psychiatry; 19th century |
| Engleby | 2007 | Unreliable narrator; thriller |
| Devil May Care | 2008 | James Bond continuation |
| A Week in December | 2009 | Contemporary London; financial crisis |
| A Possible Life | 2012 | Five lives; linked stories |
| Where My Heart Used to Beat | 2015 | WWII veteran; psychiatry |
Reading Order Recommendations
New to Faulks: Birdsong → Charlotte Gray → A Week in December.
Historical fiction: The Girl at the Lion d’Or → Birdsong → Charlotte Gray.
Complete: Birdsong → Charlotte Gray → Human Traces → A Week in December.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Sebastian Faulks book to start with?
Birdsong (1993) is the essential starting point — the most widely read British novel about the First World War, following Stephen Wraysford's experiences on the Somme and his love affair with Isabelle Azaire in the years before the war. The novel alternates between the trenches and a modern-day story of Stephen's granddaughter discovering his wartime journals. It is Faulks's most emotionally powerful work and the book that established his reputation. Charlotte Gray (1998) is the essential second novel — a Scottish woman who goes to occupied France to find her missing lover and becomes involved with the French Resistance.
What is Birdsong about?
Birdsong (1993) follows Stephen Wraysford, a young English engineer who goes to work in a French textile factory before the First World War and falls in love with Isabelle Azaire, his employer's wife. When war breaks out, Stephen serves on the Western Front — in the tunnels beneath no man's land and in the catastrophic Battle of the Somme. The novel alternates between the pre-war love story, the trenches (1916–18), and a modern-day narrative in which Stephen's granddaughter Elizabeth tries to understand his wartime experiences. The underground tunnelling sequences are among the most memorable in English fiction.
What is Charlotte Gray about?
Charlotte Gray (1998) follows a young Scottish woman who travels to occupied France in 1942 — ostensibly to find her RAF boyfriend Levade, who has gone missing after being shot down — and becomes entangled with the French Resistance and the Jewish community in a small Languedoc village. The novel is about identity (Charlotte's multiple selves: lover, spy, reluctant Resistance member), about collaboration and resistance under occupation, and about the roundup and deportation of French Jews. Faulks's most politically engaged novel.
Is Birdsong part of a French trilogy?
Birdsong is sometimes described as the third novel of a loose 'French trilogy' — The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), A Fool's Alphabet (1992), and Birdsong — though the novels do not share characters or a continuous narrative. Charlotte Gray (1998) is set in France and deals with the Second World War; it is thematically linked to Birdsong but is not a sequel. Faulks has written many other novels outside the French settings, including Human Traces (2005) on the history of psychiatry and A Week in December (2009) on contemporary London.
