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Cover of Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Lord of the Flies

  • 243 pages · about 4 hours
  • First published 1954
  • 191 editions

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1 About this book

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.

The novel has been generally well received. It was named in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 41 on the editor's list, and 25 on the reader's list. In 2003 it was listed at number 70 on the BBC's The Big Read poll, and in 2005 Time magazine named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. Time also included the novel in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time. Popular reading in schools, especially in the English-speaking world, a 2016 UK poll saw Lord of the Flies ranked third in the nation's favourite books from school.

  • Relationships
  • Adventure
  • Morality
  • Survival
  • Ethics
  • Thrillers
  • Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks
  • Airplane crash survival

2 What to expect

Schoolboys stranded on an island try to govern themselves and descend into savagery. Tense and violent, and an allegory about human nature.

Good for readers who want: a classic, a survival story, and a short read.

3 About William Golding

1911–1993

Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), Golding published another 12 volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, Golding was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. Golding was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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