"Birdsong" is a novel about the tenderness and the limits of human flesh, it is about men and women living at the edge. Set mostly in France spanning the years before and during the First World War, it captures the drama and destruction of that era as it tells the story of Stephen, a young Englishman who is impelled through a series of extreme experiences, from a traumatic clandestine love affair which rips apart the bourgeois French family he lives with, through grim insanity of the Great War. In the vast scenes of suffering and the tender depiction of human love, "Birdsong" is at times almost unbearably moving to read.

One of 15 limited edition Vintage Future Classics published to celebrate Vintage's 15th birthday. The 15 titles were voted for by reading groups all over the UK as being books that would still be read in 100 years time.

Sebastian Faulks worked as a journalist for 14 years before taking up writing books full time in 1991. He is the author of A Trick of Light, The Girl at the Lion D'Or, A Fool's Alphabet, The Fatal Englishman, Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, On Green Dolphin Street and, most recently, Human Traces.