New Releases by Michael Frayn

It''s the other people around you, says Michael Frayn, who make you what you are. So he would like to say a brief word, looking back on life from his ninetieth year, about a few of the people who have formed his own particular world. Some were friends; some not; some more than friends. Some have had a profound effect; some only a passing one. Some you may know yourself; some you certainly won''t. Some he now wonders if he ever really knew himself. The last of his subjects in this selection, and the longest and closest acquaintance of all, is his own body, a companion on life''s road at least as idiosyncratic and puzzling as everyone and everything around it. Among Others is a patchwork memoir of a lifetime''s encounters. Truthful and loving, sometimes elegiac, sometimes comic, it is a celebration of the endlessly intriguing otherness of others.

A mobile phone is something that gives you the whole world at the touch of your finger - but this book is even better. Magic Mobile is a collection of thirty ''pre-loaded'' new text files in a no-fuss, non-digital entertainment system. In a volume that succeeds Matchbox Theatre and Pocket Playhouse, each of these short comic masterpieces displays Michael Frayn''s unique genius in forever capturing life''s latest absurdities. Tune in to the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Magic Mobile 13 May, 20 May, 27 May, 3 June. Michael Frayn''s eleven novels include Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong, Spies and Skios. His seventeen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen.

Pocket Playhouse is Michael Frayn''s latest imaginative offering that brings the stage to the page. In thirty-six comic sketches, he provides a tour de force of theatrical imagination and satire. Each sketch reveals the author''s infectious delight in writing between the lines of theatre, fiction and comedy. Charmingly packaged and published with flair, Pocket Playhouse is the perfect gift for all theatre and comedy writers.

"Michael Frayn has the rare ability to construct farcical comedy around philosophical principles and the laughs and the ideas effortlessly intermesh" (Guardian) Four old friends sit down for a quiet evening together. But they are harassed by various bells, sirens, buzzers, warblers, beepers and cheepers, all trying to warn them of something. What are these electronic voices trying to tell them? Can they understand the mysterious disasters before disaster strikes? It''s a race against time - because there are seven more plays and twenty more characters still to come before the evening is through, plus a lot more strange noises - and increasingly desperate calls from eleven separate pay phones...

"One of theatre''s subtlest, most sophisticated minds" (The Times) Now You Know: "Frayn''s light but serious, marvellous play, about official and unofficial secrets, about idle curiosity and investigative purpose" (Observer)

The new collection from the author of the Booker-shortlisted novel Headlong and the internationally acclaimed play Copenhagen Here: "about time, space and life...A touching, brilliant construction. It''s both deeply thought and deeply felt'' (Sunday Times); Now You Know: "Frayn''s light but serious, marvellous new play, about official and unofficial secrets, about idle curiosity and investigative purpose" (Observer); La Belle Vivette: "Frayn''s elegant libretto... Michael Frayn has made an Offenbach opera a farce to be reckoned with...a razor-sharp reworking" (Mail on Sunday) Michael Frayn was born in 1933 in the suburbs of London and began his career as a reporter on the Guardian, before becoming a columnist. His novels include The Tin Men, The Russian Interpreter, Towards the End of Morning and The Trick of It. He has written a number of plays for television and the stage, including translations of Chekhov and smash hits such as his screenplay Clockwise and his plays Donkeys'' Years, Noises Off, Alarms and Excursions and Copenhagen. Deborah Levy "does not deal with realism, she does not deal with magic realism, rather she draws out a new territory, and if we follow we will find ourselves suspended over views we have not seen before" Jeanette Winterson, Observer

In this absurdist comedy two lovers - a playwright and his lead actress - escape to a discreet and charming Parisian hotel, conjured from a desert landscape. As the walls, door and crimson curtains of Room 322 materialise around them, a fumbling of fastenings ensues. But they soon discover they''re not the only couple intent on escaping from reality. . . The Crimson Hotel has its world premiere at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, London, on 25 July 2007. The volume also features the one-act play, Audience, a delightful send-up which holds up a mirror to the outlandish behaviour and comedy inherent in every theatre audience.

Michael Frayn''s ''gorgeous farce'' about a university reunion premiered thirty years ago at the Globe Theatre, London. Returning to the West End in a sparkling new production, it remains a classic comedy. Twenty years after graduation, six former students return to their university college for a reunion dinner. Whilst their lives may have had varying degrees of success, all are connected by a common past. Once locked in college for the night, the graduates begin to relive their youth, and old friendships, feuds - and the much-desired but absurdly proper Master''s wife - come tumbling back into the present . . . ''The show reaches that plateau of comic bliss when it becomes physically impossible to stop laughing'' Daily Telegraph ''The West End''s summer gets off to an exhilarating start with the hilarious return of Michael Frayn''s comedy Donkeys'' Years'' Sunday Express ''All the confidence of a serious comic masterpiece. Masterclass performances. This is one of the best revivals in the West End for years. Unmissable!'' Sunday Times

Comprising four one-act comic vaudevilles and four short stories adapted for the stage by Michael Frayn, The Sneeze introduces readers to a less familiar selection of work by one of the greatest precursors of modern drama. First published in 1989, this reissue includes The Sneeze; The Alien Corn; The Bear; The Evils of Tobacco; The Inspector-General; Swan Song; The Prospect, and Plots. Michael Frayn''s translations of Chekhov''s work marry the expertise of the translator with the innate understanding of a master dramatist and are widely regarded as the truest, most authentic renderings of Chekhov''s work: ''His keen imaginative sympathy with the great Russian dramatist extends beyond translation . . . But translation is an art at which he excels.'' Spectator

Afterlife is Michael Frayn''s first new play for the National Theatre since Democracy, which premiered at the National in 2003 before West End and Broadway transfers. Afterlife opens in the NT Lyttelton in June. Investigating the life of the Austrian impresario and founder of the Salzburg Festival, Max Reinhardt, Afterlife is a grand epic and a highly theatrical work that will be directed by Frayn''s long-term collaborator Michael Blakemore. With his morality play ''Everyman'', Reinhardt captivated first the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, and then the city itself, with the play opening the Salzburg festival each year from 1920 until the accession of the Nazis in 1938. As Reinhardt and his company are forced into exile, ''Everyman'' is taken to America until life imitates art and Death comes for first Reinhardt''s master of ceremonies and chief associate, Kommer, and then for Reinhardt himself.

"One of theatre''s subtlest, most sophisticated minds" (The Times) Alphabetical Order: "A comic essay about two types of woman... a very intelligent comedy because of its classic simplicity, and unusual in the way that the two types of women do not become stereotypes" (Daily Telegraph); Donkeys'' Years, a satire on the establishment and British Institutions "Gorgeous farce, all the funnier for emerging from credible aspirations and natural anxieties... the play is richer and cannier than we expect farces to be." (New Statesman); Clouds, is a satire on government sponsored trips and a portrait of sexual jealousy,"it is poignantly and unerringly funny" (Guardian); Make and Break is a satirical commentary on British corporate interests abroad "Full of pain, ruthless observation, and a sense of humour which is sardonic, lunatic and warm" (Sunday Times); Noises Off - the West End hit play about a company of actors stepping from a sex farce into their own nightmarish lives backstage "A very intelligent joke about the fragility of all forms of drama...a pulverisingly funny play." (Guardian) "All of these plays are attempts to show something of the world, not to change it or to promote any particular idea of it. That''s not to say there are no ideas in them. In fact what they are all about in one way or another is the way in which we impose our ideas upon the world around us...it might be objected that one single theme is a somewhat sparse provision to sustain five separate and dissimilar plays. I can only say that it is a theme which has occupied philosophers for over two thousand years and one which is likely to occupy them for at least two thousand more..."(Michael Frayn)

One of the funniest writers of his generation, Michael Frayn has been writing humorous newspaper columns since 1959, principally for the "Guardian" and "Observer", and originally came to prominence as the thrice weekly purveyor of these short, surreal, razor-sharp explorations of human foibles, sex, politics, manners, and the events of the day. This volume brings together 110 of his finest and funniest pieces from over the years, selected and introduced by Michael Frayn himself, and is an unmissable treat for the many fans of his unique comic voice, as well as a revelation for fans of the award-winning literary novels and plays of his later career.

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY FICTION (POST C 1945). The Russian Interpreter is a story about Raya, a mercurial Moscow blonde who speaks no English, and the affair she is embarking upon with Gordon Proctor-Gould, a visiting British businessman who speaks no Russian. They need an interpreter; which is how Paul Manning is diverted from writing his thesis at Moscow University to become involved in all the deceptions of love and East-West relations. After the death of Stalin in 1952, the Soviet Union opened its doors to the rest of the world and Michael Frayn was one of the first foreign students to enter the country. Drawing on his experience at Moscow University in the late 1950s, he brilliantly captures a country still recovering from the Second World War, racked with suspicion and intrigue, at once harsh and easy-going, lethargic and labour-intensive. Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife.

''Manning''s old friend Proctor-Gould was in Moscow and anxious to get in touch with him. Or so Manning was informed. He looked forward to the meeting. He had few friends in Moscow, none of them old friends, and no friends at all, old or new, in Moscow or anywhere else, called Proctor-Gould . . .'' Paul Manning, a young Englishman working on his thesis in Soviet-era Moscow, takes on a part-time job as interpreter for the enigmatic Gordon Proctor-Gould, ostensibly an honest businessman, but possibly involved in more clandestine activities. When Proctor-Gould falls for the mercurial blonde Raya, Manning finds himself in the awkward position of acting as interpreter in their love affair, a situation made even more awkward by Manning''s own feelings for her. And when it begins to appear Raya may be a police spy, Manning realizes he may have gotten himself into more than he bargained for ... Featuring an unusual blend of humor and suspense, Michael Frayn''s second novel, "The Russian Interpreter" (1966), was inspired in part by the author''s own experiences in Communist Russia and won the Hawthornden Prize as the best work of imaginative fiction published that year. This edition includes a new introduction by the author. ''Altogether a notable book ... Frayn is now our best equipped younger prose-writer as well as being a very sane and very funny one.'' - "Times Literary Supplement" ''Imaginative and delightful - zany characters who stick in the memory and have a genuine life of their own. Frayn juxtaposes the humorous and the frankly sinister into a satisfying and witty picture.'' - "Sunday Telegraph" ''Full of quirky, quixotic surprises ... will catch your curiosity and convert it into admiration.'' - "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review)

Matchbox Theatre presents a sketch show in miniature: thirty short entertainments by Michael Frayn, author of Skios and Noises Off, ''the funniest farce ever written'' (New York Times).These tiny plays are offered here for performance in the smallest theatre in the world: the theatre of your own imagination. The scripts are provided. Everything else -- casting, set design, ice-cream sales -- is up to you . . .

"Martin Jarvis and producer Pete Atkin have got together with BBC Radio 4 to record a wonderful series of hilarious pieces originally written by Michael Frayn. Martin Jarvis performs 99 different roles!"--Publisher''s description.

First published in 1974 and republished following the success of Frayn''s masterly work of philosophy, The Human Touch, Constructions is a dazzling, thought-provoking and fascinating book which explores some of the great problems in philosophy and of everyday life.

For the first time, Michael Frayn, the "master of what is seriously funny,"* turns his humor and narrative genius on his own family''s story, to re-create the world that made him who he is Whether he is deliriously funny or philosophically profound, as a novelist and a playwright Michael Frayn has concerned himself with the ordinary life lived by erring humans, which is always more extraordinary than people think. In My Father''s Fortune, Frayn reveals the original exemplar of the extraordinary-ordinary life: his father, Tom Frayn. A clever lad, a roofing salesman with a winning smile and a racetrack vocabulary, Tom Frayn emerged undaunted from a childhood spent in two rooms with six other people, all of them deaf. And undaunted he stayed, through German rockets, feckless in-laws, and his own increasing deafness; through the setback of a son as bafflingly slow-witted as the father was quick on his feet; through the shockingly sudden tragedy that darkened his life. Tom Frayn left his son little more than three watches and two ink-and-wash prints. But the true fortune he passed on was the great humor and spirit revealed in this beguiling memoir. * Anthony Burgess

Michael Frayn is one of the great playwrights of our time, enjoying international acclaim and prestige. This anthology contains three of Michael Frayn''s best-known titles: Copenhagen, Democracy and Afterlife, as well as an introduction by the author and a chronology of his work.

A revised edition of Michael Frayn''s comedy set in a provincial newspaper office, Alphabetical Order won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy when it transferred from the Hampstead Theatre to the West End in 1975.

Examines the role of humankind in the universe, addressing such concepts as the existence of time and space, relativity, and language in terms of the question of what the universe would be like if human beings were not around to observe or interpret it.

Uncumber lives in a dystopian world where all humanity is divided in two - the Insiders and the Outsiders. The Insiders are privileged, with their every need catered to by somatic drugs, three-dimensional holovision and prolonged life. Uncumber lives in this luxurious world and is told that she must never go out into the dust and disease of the real world. Uncumber, however, is haunted by a restless and inquisitive spirit. When she falls in love with an Outsider, she decides to go exploring. . . Michael Frayn is the award-winning author of Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award, and Skios, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. ''A fairy tale of the future. . . Frayn handles his observations and inventions brilliantly'' Guardian

From the bestselling author of Headlong and Spies, "an unconditional triumph" (The Washington Post Book World) For fifteen years, ever since the taciturn civil servant Summerchild fell to his death from a window in the Admiralty, there have been rumors. So Brian Jessel, a young member of the Cabinet Office, is diverted from his routine work and asked to prepare an internal report. Slowly, from the archives in the Cabinet Office Registry, Jessel begins to reconstruct Summerchild''s last months. It begins to emerge that, at a time when America had just put men on the moon, the British were involved in an even bolder project, and that Summerchild was investigating a phenomenon as common as sunlight, but as powerful and dangerous as any of the forces that modern science has known. The secret world into which Brian Jessel stumbles turns out to be even more extraordinary than his department had feared.