Forgotten Life

The second volume in the acclaimed Squire Quartet, available for the first time as an ebook.

Spanning fifty years and three continents – from pre-war Suffolk, to the Far East in the 1940s, to Oxford and America in the present day – Forgotten Life is a novel of immense scope, encompassing comedy and tragedy, joy and grief, as its three main characters try to work out the most difficult problem of all – the meaning of their own lives.

Brian says: ‘This novel, which in retrospect can be seen to have a similar ground plan to Non-Stop, written thirty years earlier, was more warmly received than any other Aldiss novel, not simply by its reviewers but by readers.’

Features a new introduction by the author.

Reviews

‘Excited me more than anything else I’ve read this year.’ ANTHONY BURGESS

‘A long, handsome ingenious novel about war and peace, very funny, very sad, full of closely seen, closely thought detail, wise exotic and entertaining.’ IRIS MURDOCH

The mid-life crisis, with its fumblings, fudgings and miraculous accidents of self-knowledge, has seldom been better portrayed’. OBSERVER

‘Brian Aldiss works with such zest and gaiety.’ NINA BAWDEN

‘Full of goodies… funny, human, tough, irresistibly lively.’ FINANCIAL TIMES

About the author

Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories.