The School of Night presents Michel Faber with Undying

How can you say goodbye to the love of your life?

Answering that question has been the latest endeavor of celebrated writer Michel Faber.

Faber is best known as a novelist – his thriller Under The Skin became a blockbuster sensation staring Scarlett Johansson, the phenomenal Dickensian epic Crimson Petal and the White was a bestseller and BBC hit and the genre-defying Book Of Strange New Things won over every critic and took home the Saltire Book of The Year Award. This is just a snapshot of an extraordinary body of work that has established Faber as one of his generations greatest story tellers. What few realise however, is that every page of these books bears the imprint of Faber’s beloved wife Eva.

Undying offers a different kind of story telling, and a spellbinding one at that. It is an astonishing tribute to Eva, the woman who shaped so much of his writing and sadly, devastatingly, died of cancer in 2014.

Bright, tragic, candid and true, these poems are an exceptional chronicle of what it means to find the love of your life. And what it is like to have to say goodbye. This is a work of extraordinary beauty and one that is bound to touch and inspire readers of all kinds. Faber is a striking performer and we could not be more honoured to have him with us for an evening of readings and discussion surrounding this brilliant collection.

Michel Faber addressed these love poems to his wife after her death. They are lucid, tender and wise, and they pulse with this fine writer’s intelligence -Ian McEwan