The William Posters Trilogy

Book excerpt: The bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner takes his examination of British working-class rebellion into the 1960s. In his best-known works of fiction, British novelist Alan Sillitoe “powerfully depicted revolt against authority by the young and working class” (The Washington Post). Both The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were international bestsellers and made into acclaimed films. Following those acknowledged masterpieces, Sillitoe continued to explore rebellion against an oppressive society in three novels linked by anarchist antihero Frank Dawley. In these powerful novels, Sillitoe would continue to prove himself “one of the best English writers” (The New York Times) and “the most quietly eloquent of his cohort of postwar British novelists” (Jonathan Lethem). The Death of William Posters: Frank Dawley has finally quit his soul-crushing factory job in Nottingham, left his alienating marriage, burned his possessions, and sold his car. Now he is hitching a ride to wherever the road will take him. Haunting Frank’s physical and existential travels is a ubiquitous inscription painted on nearly every street corner in England: BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Relentlessly hounded by authorities, whoever William Posters is, he becomes a symbol of the servile proletariat—exactly what Frank hopes to escape. He finds his way from England to Spain to Morocco—and into the beds of several married women along the way. Finally, in Algeria, he meets a revolutionary American, whom he joins in a high-stakes gunrunning mission. A Tree on Fire: Jewish dilettante Myra Bassingfield is returning to England from Gibraltar with her four-week-old son. The child’s father, Frank Dawley, has disappeared into the African desert, where he is fighting for Algerian independence against French troops. Greeting Myra is Frank’s friend, Albert Handley, an idealistic painter living in a chaotic home with a large family. But after Albert’s brother burns down the house, the Handley brood moves in with Myra in Buckinghamshire. By the time Frank finally returns to England, they have formed a commune—a domestic cell of protest that may just plant the seeds of a new revolution. The Flame of Life: Collective cohabitation soon reveals its downfalls within the commune that has set up camp at the home of wealthy Myra Bassingfield. Painter Albert Handley is pursuing a whirlwind existence of art, sex, and chaotic domestic life. Frank Dawley, returned from gunrunning in Algeria, has brought his wife and two kids from Nottingham to live in the Buckinghamshire kibbutz. And when a young Spanish anarchist arrives with assassination on her mind, her trunk full of notebooks may condemn Frank for a sin committed in the African desert. As the community begins to unravel, the very notion of revolution comes under scrutiny.