Best Selling Books by Michael Frayn

It''s the other people around you, says Michael Frayn, who make you what you are. So he would like to say a brief word, looking back on life from his ninetieth year, about a few of the people who have formed his own particular world. Some were friends; some not; some more than friends. Some have had a profound effect; some only a passing one. Some you may know yourself; some you certainly won''t. Some he now wonders if he ever really knew himself. The last of his subjects in this selection, and the longest and closest acquaintance of all, is his own body, a companion on life''s road at least as idiosyncratic and puzzling as everyone and everything around it. Among Others is a patchwork memoir of a lifetime''s encounters. Truthful and loving, sometimes elegiac, sometimes comic, it is a celebration of the endlessly intriguing otherness of others.

The two old friends, both nuclear scientists, found themselves on opposite sides in a world war, and Heisenberg''s intentions on that visit, for good or for evil, have long intrigued and baffled historians and scientists.".

A collection of short plays Black and Silver Characters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set In this short, affecting and laughable scene parents are awakened in the middle of the night by the baby. They stumble about trying to pacify the infant. At one point the husband panics because he cannot hear the baby breathing in the cradle, which is only reasonable because the wife has put it on their bed. Mr. Foot Characters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set A

Winner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award after its long run at the Hampstead Theatre and on the West End in 1975, Alphabetical Order is set in the library of a provincial newspaper where battle is joined between the forces of order and chaos, between arid organisation in the person of the new library assistant, Leslie, and humane confusion in the person of Lucy, the much-loved resident librarian. Drawing on his experience as a journalist, Frayn draws his gallery of characters with the hilarious accuracy which can only come from first-hand experience. This edition features the author''s revised version of the script presented at the Hampstead Theatre in April 2009.

Afterlife is Michael Frayn''s first new play for the National Theatre since Democracy, which premiered at the National in 2003 before West End and Broadway transfers. Afterlife opens in the NT Lyttelton in June. Investigating the life of the Austrian impresario and founder of the Salzburg Festival, Max Reinhardt, Afterlife is a grand epic and a highly theatrical work that will be directed by Frayn''s long-term collaborator Michael Blakemore. With his morality play ''Everyman'', Reinhardt captivated first the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, and then the city itself, with the play opening the Salzburg festival each year from 1920 until the accession of the Nazis in 1938. As Reinhardt and his company are forced into exile, ''Everyman'' is taken to America until life imitates art and Death comes for first Reinhardt''s master of ceremonies and chief associate, Kommer, and then for Reinhardt himself.

''Manning''s old friend Proctor-Gould was in Moscow and anxious to get in touch with him. Or so Manning was informed. He looked forward to the meeting. He had few friends in Moscow, none of them old friends, and no friends at all, old or new, in Moscow or anywhere else, called Proctor-Gould . . .'' Paul Manning, a young Englishman working on his thesis in Soviet-era Moscow, takes on a part-time job as interpreter for the enigmatic Gordon Proctor-Gould, ostensibly an honest businessman, but possibly involved in more clandestine activities. When Proctor-Gould falls for the mercurial blonde Raya, Manning finds himself in the awkward position of acting as interpreter in their love affair, a situation made even more awkward by Manning''s own feelings for her. And when it begins to appear Raya may be a police spy, Manning realizes he may have gotten himself into more than he bargained for ... Featuring an unusual blend of humor and suspense, Michael Frayn''s second novel, "The Russian Interpreter" (1966), was inspired in part by the author''s own experiences in Communist Russia and won the Hawthornden Prize as the best work of imaginative fiction published that year. This edition includes a new introduction by the author. ''Altogether a notable book ... Frayn is now our best equipped younger prose-writer as well as being a very sane and very funny one.'' - "Times Literary Supplement" ''Imaginative and delightful - zany characters who stick in the memory and have a genuine life of their own. Frayn juxtaposes the humorous and the frankly sinister into a satisfying and witty picture.'' - "Sunday Telegraph" ''Full of quirky, quixotic surprises ... will catch your curiosity and convert it into admiration.'' - "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review)

Implications of the theory of entropy (that the trend of the universe is towards death) is humorously applied to the goings-on in a London newspaper office.

Owen Shorter, professional journalist, and Mara Hill, well known lady novelist, discover at the beginning of the play that they have been sent to Cuba to write for rival color supplements. We follow their progress, together with Ed, an author from Illinois, and their guide, Angel, on their fact finding mission, as they do the obligatory rounds of official visits to sugar cane processing plants, new towns and other industrial show pieces.-2 women, 3 men

"One of theatre''s subtlest, most sophisticated minds" (The Times) One spring morning a quiet, shy man in his sixties sets out from Land''s End to walk the length of his native land. He has never walked more than a dozen miles in his life before, his health is uncertain, his boots are new, and he is too diffident to talk to anyone he meets along the way. His slow, solitary progress up the spine of Britain is watched by an unseen audience - his family and friends at home. How far will he get before he is forced to give up? Is he being heroic or merely selfish? As the days of his absence go by the old alliances and quarrels inside the family shift and alter. What emerges is a story about the arbitrariness of human endeavour and about the tenacious complexity of human relationships; about one man''s glimpse of the country he lives in; about courage and about love.First and Last was directed by Alan Dossor in a production for BBC television, with Joss Ackland as the walker.

Comprising four one-act comic vaudevilles and four short stories adapted for the stage by Michael Frayn, The Sneeze introduces readers to a less familiar selection of work by one of the greatest precursors of modern drama. First published in 1989, this reissue includes The Sneeze; The Alien Corn; The Bear; The Evils of Tobacco; The Inspector-General; Swan Song; The Prospect, and Plots. Michael Frayn''s translations of Chekhov''s work marry the expertise of the translator with the innate understanding of a master dramatist and are widely regarded as the truest, most authentic renderings of Chekhov''s work: ''His keen imaginative sympathy with the great Russian dramatist extends beyond translation . . . But translation is an art at which he excels.'' Spectator

Set in the waning years of London''s Fleet Street, this is the story of John Dyson and his colleagues in the crossword and nature-notes section of an obscure London newspaper. The ambitious young Dyson dreams wistfully of trading his dead-end job for the fame and fortune to be found in a career in television. But when he finally gets his big break - an invitation to appear on a TV program - it turns out instead to be the beginning of a series of hilarious disasters ... Regarded by many as the best novel ever written about journalists, Michael Frayn''s brilliantly funny "Towards the End of the Morning" (1967) is justly celebrated as a classic in Great Britain but has been long unavailable in America. This new edition features an introduction by the author. ''The most delightful, sophisticated novel: Michael Frayn is probably England''s funniest writer.'' - "New York Times" ''High comedy ... an extremely well-written, witty novel.'' - "Daily Telegraph" ''A gem of a comic book. It''s a brilliant, fast game of poker with the author holding all the best hands.'' - "Vogue" ''Still ranks with Evelyn Waugh''s "Scoop" as one of the funniest novels about journalists ever written.'' - "Sunday Times"

A Michael Frayn play in which a couple move into an empty room and begin to construct their life together. The responsibility is daunting, especially when they reflect that it has taken the whole of the history of the world to get them together in this particular place at this particular time.

Set at a trade fair in Frankfurt, where a small and successful British firm is selling building components. The subject is work - man''s unending sentence to transform and reorganise the contents of the world, to buy and sell, to manufacture, destroy and manufacture again. The characters are the reps and the men who run the firm, longing to escape from work but lost without it, as they use others and find themselves used, as they consume the world and are in the end consumed.

Matchbox Theatre presents a sketch show in miniature: thirty short entertainments by Michael Frayn, author of Skios and Noises Off, ''the funniest farce ever written'' (New York Times).These tiny plays are offered here for performance in the smallest theatre in the world: the theatre of your own imagination. The scripts are provided. Everything else -- casting, set design, ice-cream sales -- is up to you . . .

In this absurdist comedy two lovers - a playwright and his lead actress - escape to a discreet and charming Parisian hotel, conjured from a desert landscape. As the walls, door and crimson curtains of Room 322 materialise around them, a fumbling of fastenings ensues. But they soon discover they''re not the only couple intent on escaping from reality. . . The Crimson Hotel has its world premiere at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, London, on 25 July 2007. The volume also features the one-act play, Audience, a delightful send-up which holds up a mirror to the outlandish behaviour and comedy inherent in every theatre audience.

A collection of writings by novelist and playwright Michael Frayn, which are based on his column in the Guardian, covering the pomposities and inanities of public announcements, fashionable conversations and self-advertising of all kinds. From News at Ten on Hamlet to an extra chapter in the Book of Genesis describing the week after creation; from airline stewards'' briefings to a new opera, The Magic Mobile, in which Papageno tries frantically to phone home from the airport, Frayn displays a accurate ear for the ludicrous prose styles of modern life.

Pocket Playhouse is Michael Frayn''s latest imaginative offering that brings the stage to the page. In thirty-six comic sketches, he provides a tour de force of theatrical imagination and satire. Each sketch reveals the author''s infectious delight in writing between the lines of theatre, fiction and comedy. Charmingly packaged and published with flair, Pocket Playhouse is the perfect gift for all theatre and comedy writers.

Frayn combines the wit of Calvin Trillin with the wisdom of John Updike in this hilarious novel about an unlikely con man wagers wife, wealth, and sanity in pursuit of an elusive Old Master.

Noises off, the classic farce by the Tony Award-winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage "drama" that develops during Nothing On''s final rehearsal and tour. The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

When Michael Frayn''s adaptation of Chekov''s classic opens on Broadway December 18 after a triumphant run on the London stage, readers will want this Signet Classic exclusive!

"One of theatre''s subtlest, most sophisticated minds" (The Times) Benefactors conjures the world of the suburbs observed through the lens of post-imperialism; "dazzling.. This prismatic work circumscribes the disillusionment of an era" (New York Times); Balmoral dares to imagine what Britain would be like if it had gone through the Russian revolution in 1917; "a sophisticated drollery, an educated amusement" (New Statesman); Wild Honey is a reworking of Checkov''s first play (also known as Platonov) and is shot through with farce, feminism and eroticism.