With over 20 books published over four decades, choosing where to begin reading Sebastian Faulks can be daunting. This guide offers suggested starting points based on different interests and reading preferences.

The book to read first

The Girl at the Lion d’Or (1989)
Set in a small French town during the 1930s, the novel tells the story of Anne, a young waitress haunted by family scandal, and Hartmann, a married former intelligence officer. As their relationship develops, personal and political tensions mount and the country around them drifts towards crisis. This book is the first instalment of the French trilogy.

Sebastian’s most famous book

Birdsong (1993)
The novel follows Stephen Wraysford, a young English soldier whose deployment to the Western Front in 1916 sees him revisit the site of a passionate affair he had six years prior. The second book in the French trilogy, Birdsong is also a standalone read.

Complete the French trilogy

Charlotte Gray (1998)
The final book in the French trilogy, this novel centres around a young Scottish woman who parachutes into occupied France in 1942, driven by duty to the British war effort and hope of finding her missing lover. Landing in the town of Lavaurette, Charlotte becomes entangled in the tensions of the Resistance and personal loss.

Contemporary fiction

Paris Echo (2018)
The novel follows two outsiders in contemporary Paris – Hannah, an American historian researching Vichy France, and Tariq, a Moroccan teenager hoping to learn more about his late mother – whose lives intersect as they navigate the unfamiliar city.

The Seventh Son (2023)
Set across London, New York, and the Scottish Highlands, the story begins with a tech billionaire’s secretive IVF experiment that produces a child unlike any other named Seth. As young Seth’s differences become more apparent, powerful forces close in.

For something different

Engleby (2007)
Narrator Mike Engleby is a brilliant but unsettling student in 1970s Cambridge. As he tells his story of a traumatic past, a missing girl, and his rise as a journalist, cracks begin to form in his recollections.

Further exploration

Where My Heart Used to Beat (2015)
British doctor Robert Hendricks visits a mysterious host on a remote French island and finds himself drawn into a reckoning with his past, from the horrors of WWII Italy to lost love and the moral challenges of post-war trauma. As his memories resurface, so do questions about truth and healing.

Sebastian’s memoir

Fires Which Burned Brightly (2025)
The memoir offers insight into childhood in post-war England, finding literary success, and tales of personal adventures, from working on Fleet Street to the writing of Birdsong.