Author biography
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His plays include Alphabetical Order, Clouds, Donkeys’ Years, Make or Break and Benefactors. Noises Off won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier Best Comedy of the Year. His more recent plays include Copenhagen, which won the 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play (USA), and Democracy, which opened to great critical acclaim in 2003. His latest play, Afterlife, opened in 2008.
He has also translated a number of works from Russian, including plays by Chekhov and Tolstoy. His films for television include First and Last (1989), for which he won an Emmy, and an adaptation of his 1991 novel A Landing on the Sun.
His novels include Headlong (1999), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Spies (2002), which won the Whitbread Novel Award.
He is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.
Praise for Headlong:
‘For those who like their fictional confectionery dark and hard-edged (though not bitter), Michael Frayn is outstanding.’ Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph
‘It’s brilliant … I loved it.’ Penelope Lively, Independent
‘Michael Frayn is the most philosophical comic writer – and the most comic philosophical writer – of our time.’ Michael Arditti, Daily Mail
‘Frayn keeps history and comedy in exquisite balance … Only after clapping Headlong shut does its full complexity dawn.’ Anthony Quinn, Mail on Sunday
‘It is a heady ride … well worth the ticket price … there is genuine intellectual pleasure for the autodidactic and dilettante in all of us.’ Alan Mahar, Literary Review
by the same author
fiction
THE TIN MEN
THE RUSSIAN INTERPRETER
TOWARDS THE END OF THE MORNING
A VERY PRIVATE LIFE
SWEET DREAMS
THE TRICK OF IT
A LANDING ON THE SUN
NOW YOU KNOW
SPIES
non fiction
CELIA’S SECRET
an investigation (with David Burke)
plays
THE TWO OF US
ALPHABETICAL ORDER
DONKEY’S YEARS
CLOUDS
BALMORAL
MAKE AND BREAK
NOISES OFF
BENEFACTORS
LOOK LOOK
HERE
NOW YOU KNOW
COPENHAGEN
ALARMS & EXCURSIONS
THE SANDBOY
translations
UNCLE VANYA (CHEKHOV)
THREE SISTERS (CHEKHOV)
THE CHERRY ORCHARD (CHEKHOV)
THE SNEEZE (CHEKHOV)
WILD HONEY (CHEKHOV)
THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT (TOLSTOY)
EXCHANGE (TRIFONOV)
NUMBER ONE (ANOUILH)
Film and television
CLOCKWISE
FIRST AND LAST
REMEMBER ME?
opera
LA BELLE VIVETTE
(From Offenbach’S La Belle Hélène)
Copyright
First published in 1999
by Faber and Faber Limited
3 Queen Square London WC1N 3AU
This ebook edition first published in 2008
All rights reserved
© Michael Frayn, 1999
The right of Michael Frayn to be identified as author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN 978—0—571—24919—0 [epub edition]
Headlong Page 34