The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler

Many will know of my love of books and writers and this love I have for the written word goes back to my childhood and how I collected books. I even started to read my father’s collection of World War I and II book especially the collection of Sven Hassel WWII novels. Sadly, over the course of all these years those books got lost in the many moves from England to Germany and back. Now fast forward to the Autumn of 2017 and Christopher Fowler has just released The Book of Forgotten Authors a book full of ghosts from the distant past.

Author

If like me, you love nothing better than to curl up as the nights start closing in with a book on writers then here is you book choice. I had the pleasure of interviewing Christopher Fowler in March in one of my Meet the Author blog posts and he is the type of writer that I really enjoy especially the Bryant and May Crime Stories and now added to this The Book of Forgotten Authors is just pure literary joy. A bibliophiles dream of a book.

What Christopher Fowler has created here is a collection of ninety-nine authors who have just fallen purely out of fashion, or just time has forgotten. I am sure there are some that you will recall and long forgotten and some that you will not have come across before. But all of them are just simply wonderful. A collection of details and moments of literary greatness. As time passes and new writers come to the fore many writers just fade in the background and their books just seem to be buried in time and a mountain of other books. There are so many stories in this collection and anecdotes. How did one writer become the butler of the CEO of MacDonald’s for instance. The list is just endless. When I first started to read The Book of Forgotten Authors I was lost in literary. Time passed and I really did not care. Then low and behold here hidden among the other forgotten authors was none other than my father’s favourites Sven Hassel. Just for one moment I was back in the mid 1970’s. Memories flooded back. A smile, a tear. Ok so his books are shrouded in a little controversy but my father loved reading them and so did I back then. Then in between these essays Fowler has hidden some real gems. The Forgotten Books of Charles Dickens, The Forgotten Booker Winners and many more surprises.

Christopher Fowler is just a joy to read. He has bags of writing talent of that there is now doubt and if you know someone who loves books on authors then The Book of Forgotten Authors would make the ideal gift. It is just splendid. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

384 Pages.

Thank you to Elizabeth Masters for the advanced review copy of The Book of Forgotten Author and also to Anne Cater for kindly arranging the Blog Tour.

The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler is published by riverrun and was published on 5^th October and is available through Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops.