Publisher, Listening Library (October 2005)

Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

"…The author's reading is lucid and engaging." --School Library Journal

Since its appearance in 1955, Golding's disturbing inquiry into human savagery has gained a vast audience. In this simple and elegant tale, English public schoolboys are stranded on a tropical island. Left in the state of nature, these paragons of British boyhood abandon social norms and quickly revert to barbarism, ritualism, and murder. When Golding reproduces their voices, he portrays them not as monstrous abstractions but as naive, willful boys.

William Golding's classic novel of primitive savagery and survival is one of the most vividly realized and riveting works in modern fiction. The tale begins after a plane wreck deposits a group of English school boys, aged six to twelve on an isolated tropical island. Their struggle to survive and impose order quickly evolves from a battle against nature into a battle against their own primitive instincts. Golding's portrayal of the collapse of social order into chaos draws the fine line between innocence and savagery.

About the Author: Sir William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. He started writing at the age of seven, but following the wishes of his parents, studied natural sciences and English at Oxford. He served in World War II and following the war, returned to writing and teaching. By the time Lord of the Flies was finally accepted for publication in 1954, it had been turned down by more than twenty publishers. The book became an immediate bestseller. In 1983, Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, largely based on this book. He was knighted in 1988 and died in 1993.