Birdsong (novel)

Birdsong
	First UK edition cover
Author	Sebastian Faulks
Language	English
Genre	War novel, Family saga
Publisher	Hutchinson
Publication date	16 September 1993 (UK)
Publication place	United Kingdom
Pages	407
ISBN	0-09-177373-3
Preceded by	The Girl at the Lion d'Or
Followed by	Charlotte Gray

Birdsong is a 1993 war novel and family saga by the English author Sebastian Faulks.^[1] It is Faulks's fourth novel. The plot follows two main characters living at different times: the first is Stephen Wraysford, a British soldier on the front line in Amiens during the First World War, and the second is his granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, whose 1970s plotline follows her attempts to recover an understanding of Stephen's experience of the war.

Faulks developed the novel to bring more public awareness to the experience of war remembered by WWI veterans. Most critics found this effort successful, commenting on how the novel, like many other WWI novels, thematically focuses on how the experience of trauma shapes individual psyches.^[2] Similarly, because of the parallel narratives WWI and 1970s Britain, the novel explores metahistorical questions about how to document and recover narratives about the past. Because of its genre, themes and writing style, the novel has been favourably compared to a number of other war novels, such as Ian McEwan's Atonement and those in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy.

Birdsong is part of a loose trilogy of novels by Sebastian Faulks, alongside The Girl at the Lion d'Or and Charlotte Gray; the three are linked through location, history and several minor characters.^[3] Birdsong is one of Faulks's best-received works, earning both critical and popular praise, including being listed as the 13th favourite book in Britain in a 2003 BBC survey called the Big Read.^[4] It has also been adapted three times under the same title: for radio (1997), the stage (2010) and television (2012).

^ Winter, Jay M. (2006). Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. 40. ISBN 0-300-12752-9. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
^ MacCallum-Stewart, Esther (1 January 2007). ""If they ask us why we died": Children's Literature and the First World War, 1970–2005". The Lion and the Unicorn. 31 (2): 176–188. doi:10.1353/uni.2007.0022. ISSN 1080-6563. S2CID 145779652.
^ "Bloomsbury Publishing". Bloomsbury.com. Archived from the original on 15 January 2008. Retrieved 12 December 2010.
^ "The Big Read – Top 100 Books". BBC. 2003. Archived from the original on 31 October 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2010.

[Winter2006-1] Winter, Jay M. (2006). Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. 40. ISBN 0-300-12752-9. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2016.

[2] MacCallum-Stewart, Esther (1 January 2007). ""If they ask us why we died": Children's Literature and the First World War, 1970–2005". The Lion and the Unicorn. 31 (2): 176–188. doi:10.1353/uni.2007.0022. ISSN 1080-6563. S2CID 145779652.

[3] "Bloomsbury Publishing". Bloomsbury.com. Archived from the original on 15 January 2008. Retrieved 12 December 2010.

[The_Big_Read_–_Top_100_Books-4] "The Big Read – Top 100 Books". BBC. 2003. Archived from the original on 31 October 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2010.

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