Shelf Help: Sebastian Faulks, Kings Place

Sebastian Faulks is an evangelist for literature’s ability to positively transform experience. In this talk, he will delve into psychology and philosophy to investigate the nature of the mind, while revisiting his 2005 epic Human Traces .
For the Shelf Help initiative, literary critic Alex Clark has selected twelve recent books from Vintage’s voluminous backlist that offer a literary alternative to self-help. There is a title for each month, and talks from the writers run throughout the year. Alongside Faulks, the series encompasses such luminaries as Jeanette Winterson, Edmund de Waal and Julian Barnes.
Human Traces is the tale of two psychologists and their intersecting lives. Spanning continents and the forty-five years between 1876 and 1921, the novel delves deep into both historical and speculative psychological theories as its protagonists struggle to untangle cognition, sanity and insanity. Both intellectually ambitious and firmly focused on its individual characters, it is Faulks’ masterpiece.
Sebastian Faulks is one of Britain’s most wide-ranging novelists. Most famous for Birdsong (1993), an unflinching look at the Great War, he is one of the few contemporary authors able to combine literary quality with popular success. A passionate bookworm with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the novel, he is an enormously engaging speaker.