Lunchtime Author Talk: Toby Faber

Join Unity Books Wellington, Faber & Faber and Allen & Unwin NZ for an in-store author talk with Toby Faber, author of ‘Faber & Faber: The Untold Story’ and a new crime thriller, ‘Close to the Edge’.
Toby Faber, grandson of the founder of Faber & Faber, will be speaking about the vibrant history of this legendary publisher, including publishing T.S. Eliot, William Golding, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath (and rejecting George Orwell).

About the books:
'Faber & Faber: The Untold Story of a Great Publishing House'

A vibrant history of the London publishing house Faber and Faber told in its own words. Published to celebrate Faber’s 90th anniversary, this is for readers who love books and are curious about the business of writing.

Faber and Faber is one of the world’s greatest independent publishers. Literary superstars like T.S.Eliot, William Golding, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath are synonymous with the name ‘Faber’, as are the leafy squares of twentieth-century Bloomsbury. But what is the real tale behind the house that brought together these authors? And how did a tiny firm set up by two men in 1925 – weathering obstacles from wartime paper shortages to dramatic financial crashes – survive to this very day?

Toby Faber has grown up with these stories, and uses a range of humorous and surprising sources to tell the history of the publisher in its own words. Drawing on material from memos to board minutes and unpublished memoirs, Faber takes us deep inside the evolution of the company: and along the way, we meet a cast of colourful characters that are stranger than fiction, whether poets or novelists, managers or editors.

Decade by decade, Faber’s portrait of one company’s history becomes not only that of an entire century, but a hymn to the role of the arts in public life. Faber & Faber shows us how publishing can shift a nation’s cultural conversation – and speaks directly to the way we engage with literature today.

'Close To The Edge'

Morning rush hour on the London tube. Laurie Bateman witnesses a terrible accident. Life had been looking up – she’s dating a new man and finally getting praise at work. But after the accident everything seems to plummet downhill. In the space of a few days her flat is burgled and her flatmate assaulted – she loses her phone and then her job. Are these events linked?

Perhaps what she had seen was something more sinister?

Compelled to investigate, Laurie finds herself in serious danger and is soon fleeing for her life through tube tunnels in the dead of night – the hunter has become the hunted.

About the author:
As the grandson of Faber’s founder, Toby Faber grew up steeped in the company’s books and its stories. He was Faber’s managing director for four years and remains a non-executive director and chairman of sister company Faber Music. He has written two celebrated works of non-fiction, Stradivarius and Faberge’s Eggs, and his first novel, Close to the Edge, will be published by Muswell Press in 2019. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters.