Browse the newest Faber titles, from debut novels and gripping crime thrillers to the best new poetry, children's books and refreshed editions of classic works of literature.
Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today.
Our non-fiction catalogue features thinkers, writers and entertainers – from the QI team and Lenny Henry to James Shapiro and Jenny Uglow – whose books stimulate joy and laughter or new ways of thinking about the world.
From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer.
With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads & Young Adult fiction.
Faber is proud to collaborate with writers and actors to produce audiobooks that bring classic novels and contemporary bestsellers to life in sound. Browse our fast-growing list of titles.
As a publisher, we believe in our collective power to help deliver tangible change towards a more equal and fair society, through our publishing, campaigning, outreach and advocacy.
Enjoy exclusive interviews, films, reading lists and quizzes as a Faber Member. Simply sign in to your account to unlock all articles or sign up for free.
The first book for 16 years from a giant of the poetry stage – now in paperback.
1 in stock
£10.99
We are temporarily only able to ship Faber Shop orders to addresses in the UK.
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780571333820
Date Published
05.09.2019
Delivery
All orders are sent via Royal Mail and are tracked: choose from standard or premium delivery.
Summary
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry The Noise of a Fly is the first collection from Douglas Dunn in sixteen years, and the first since he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2013. It is a book brimming with warmth, mischief and a self-deprecating humour, as well as with a charming, ‘Larkinesque’ crankiness: a quarrel with ageing, an impatience with youth, the grievousness of losing friends and colleagues. But for all its intimate, hearthside rumination, this is a volume of poems that looks outward in equal measure: at Scottish independence, British politics and an international refugee crisis, and reflects unflinchingly on what it is to consider oneself a contributor to society. Penned with a dexterous wit and a steady nerve, The Noise of a Fly is a mesmeric imagining of our later years by one of this country’s most senior and celebrated writers.
‘It is hard to think of many poets who can equal his combination of imaginative ambition, formal resource and range of tone . . . Written on these terms, poetry is a matter of permanent urgency.’ Sean O’Brien
‘The most respected Scottish poet of his generation.’ Nicholas Wroe
Critic Reviews
The Noise of a Fly may look slim but it is intensely rich.
The Herald
Critic Reviews
A splendidly choreographed collection… Dunn is a kind commentator and an equally compassionate observer … The book closes in quiet celebration. A place where Dunn can hear “an oatcake crumble” and withdraw within: “A domestic symphony,/A solitude sufficiently robust/To encourage mumbles of wonder.” His mumbles are marvellous.
The National
Critic Reviews
Although the opening poem, “Idleness”, a beautiful little quatrain, suggests a book of nostalgia and obituary (“The sigh of an exhausted garden-ghost / A poem trapped in an empty fountain pen”), what is more significant is the constant keeks of mischievous humour … The huge virtuoso piece in the collection is a long and intricate piece, “English (a Scottish essay)” which must be one of the most significant works to emerge from the debates about nationality and nationalism after the 2014 referendum.
Scotsman
Critic Reviews
‘And cruising the internet’s labyrinthine paths I lit on the discreet Douglas Dunn, whose New Selected Poems I read cover to cover before ordering The Noise of a Fly (Faber). Such scrupulous thoughts, whether they be essaying thoughts or keeping the bloom on a Chardinesque bowl of “Ripe Bananas”'
Beverley Bie Brahic, TLS Books of the Year
Critic Reviews
“Gave yet another lecture. God I’m boring...Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore,” complains the Scottish writer Douglas Dunn in the aptly titled Thursday. Old poets love to play the curmudgeon. The loveliest poems in The Noise of a Fly, his first collection for 16 years, are about garden minutiae - but Dunn is no bore. The book is distinguished by its preternaturally attentive lyricism; in the opening poem, Idleness, for example, he hears “the flap of a butterfly. / The unfolding wing of a resting wren.”
James Marriott, Times Books of the Year: Poetry
Critic Reviews
‘Dunn has a gift for rhyme and assonance that recollects WH Auden’
Scotsman Scottish Books 2017
DouglasDunn
Douglas Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, in 1942 and lived there until he married at the age of twenty-two. After working as a librarian in Scotland and Akron, Ohio, he studied English at Hull University, graduating in 1969. He then worked for eighteen months in the university library after which, in 1971, he became a freelance writer. In 1991…
You can unsubscribe by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the end of any email you receive from us. You can cancel your membership by emailing members@faber.co.uk. For more on how we use your personal data, please see our Privacy Policy.
Thanks
Thank you for signing up to Faber Members. You will receive a welcome email shortly.
