***Birdsong is thronged with living characters: Isabelle, the apparently conventional yet passionately driven wife of Stephen's French employer Michael Weir, his one true friend Jack Firebrace, a miner from East London betrayed by his loving heart Jeanne, a woman of unending patience and resource. His life goes through a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experience of the war itself. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. ***'Set before and during the Great War, it captures the drama of that era on both a national and personal scale.

***'When I go from here, let this be my parting word that what I have seen is unsurpassable.' This line, quoted by Wilfred Owen to his mother on their final meeting, is the epigraph to this extraordinary novel. Just slight fading to the spine colour of the dustwrapper, mainly along the edge near the front panel. The matt dustwrapper is marked in places. The dustwrapper is complete with no loss, but the edges are rubbed and creased. ***In a very good colour-illustrated dustwrapper that has been corner price-clipped. Internally also very good with no inscriptions. Edges of boards slightly rubbed, with slight creasing to the head and tail of the spine. Top edge of page block very clean and white. ***Very good in green cloth-covered boards with silver titles to the spine. Third impression of the true first edition with number-string sequence as follows on the printer's page: 3 5 7 9 8 6 4.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks