Headlong

by Michael Frayn

  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]