Among Others
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.
Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn is a playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy.
His novels, such as Towards the End of Morning, Headlong and Spies have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. He has also written philosophical works, such as The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe.
Lost in Ibiza
On her twenty-first birthday, environmental activist Alice learns that the man who has raised her is not her father after all. She is surprised to learn that her biological father, William, is a property developer based in Ibiza, where he is immersed in a huge deal that will further increase his wealth.
Alice and William meet for the first time in Ibiza, inadvertently finding themselves on a road trip across the island, unravelling secrets from the past and glimpses of the future as they go.
Seen from the perspective of four characters with widely divergent world views, Lost in Ibiza offers an intimate meditation on family dynamics, set against the larger canvas of an island utopia that teeters on the brink of environmental catastrophe.
Rebecca Frayn
Rebecca Frayn is an English documentary film maker, screenwriter, novelist and actress. She has directed a wide variety of quirky documentary essays for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV on subjects that range from Tory Wives to the Friern Barnet Mental Asylum and identical twins.
Her first novel, One Life, dealt with the complex emotional and ethical landscape of IVF. Her second novel, Deceptions, is a psychological thriller, inspired by a true story; it explores the impact on a family when a child goes missing. Lost in Ibiza follows this year.
