Lose yourself in ancient civilizations in these three historical novellas by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies.Even when he leapt from the parapet he talked.Ancient Egypt. The Prince is set to marry Pretty Flower, his sister, in the Great House's incestuous society. But the Liar speaks a truth that transforms everything .A primitive matriarchal society. While mothers raise children in the bucolic Place of Women, Chimp is tormented by the Leopard Men in their brutal hunts, until he gains new wisdom .Imperial Rome. In an era of invention and exploration, the emperor realises he loves his illegitimate grandson more than his own loutish heir .'Communicates visionary ideas about the present and his imaginative understanding of our collective pasts.' Bettany Hughes'Golding writes the past as present [with] uncanny skill and tremendous intuition.' Ben Okri'Brilliant . So fluent and stylish that the stories read themselves like a dream.'Daily Telegraph'Ingenious ... Perhaps the ambition of these books seems to put them a bit over the top, a bit out of their time.' London Review of Books

William Golding (1911 - 1993) was born in Cornwall and educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. Before becoming a writer, he was an actor, small-boat sailor, musician and schoolteacher. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and took part in the D-Day operation and liberation of Holland. Lord of the Flies, his first novel, was rejected by several publishers but rescued from the'reject pile' at Faber and published in 1954. It became a modern classic selling millions of copies, translated into 44 languages and made into a film by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding wrote eleven other novels, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988 and died in 1993. www.william-golding.co.uk.