Works by
Michael Frayn
(Writer)
[September 8, 1933 - ]

Fiction

• Spies (2002, UK, US)
  In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live there is very little evidence of the Second World War. But the two friends suspect that the inhabitants of the Close are not what they seem. As Keith authoritatively informs the trusting Stephen, the whole district is riddled with secret passages and underground laboratories. Then one day Keith announces an even more disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family, and the children find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for.

• Headlong (1999, UK, US)
  A young would-be art historian suddenly sees the chance of a lifetime: the opportunity to perform a great public service, and at the same time to make his professional reputation - perhaps even rather a lot of money as well...

• Now You Know (1993, UK, US)
  Terry is a bit of a wide-boy, but also an activist running a small team dedicated to more open government. He is energetic, powerful, not entirely scrupulous - but he is also charming and entertaining. Around him he has collected a group of admiring helpers.

• A Landing on the Sun (1991, UK, US)
  A civil servant in the Cabinet Office, Brian Jessel is asked to re-open the case of a predecessor who died in the 1970s, apparently by suicide. As he investigates the case he discovers what really happened - and the reader learns about Brian's own troubled life.

• The Trick of It (1989, UK, US)
  An authoress is invited by a lecturer who has devoted his life to studying and teaching her nine novels and 27 short stories. As she arrives to speak to his students he feels he has a chance to resolve the one remaining mystery at the heart of things.

• Sweet Dreams (1973, UK, US)
  Heaven, reported St John in Revelation, was a cubical city 12,000 furlongs high made of 'pure gold, like unto clear glass'. That was 1,900 years ago, and Heaven as it is today has changed out of all recognition. This book is the account of a recent journey to the metropolis at the nerve-centre of the universe. The journey was undertaken not by a mystical reporter like St John, but by Howard Baker, an observer of much more modern outlook. He finds a city that offers rich opportunities for leisure and enjoyment - but one which also presents a moral and intellectual challenge. In short, a city that is highly adapted to the requirements of modest, responsible, likeable, educated men of liberal views and genuine social concern called Howard Baker.

• A Very Private Life (1968, UK, US)
  A dystopian novel set in the distant future. Frayn's inquisitive heroine is smitten by love and fuelled by angst and seeks to break free of her enclosed community.

• Towards the End of the Morning (1967, UK, US)
  This tale is set in the crossword and nature-notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street.

• The Russian Interpreter (1966, UK, US)
  When a mercurial Moscow blonde and a visiting British businessman conduct an affair through their Russian interpreter it reveals all the deceptions of love and East-West relations.

• The Tin Men (1965, UK, US)
  Why not program computers to take over the really dull jobs that human beings have to do? At the William Morris Institute of Automaton Research they are doing just that, to enable mankind to take care of the really stimulating and demanding tasks of living, such as the impending royal visit.

Non-fiction

• Michael Frayn: Collected Columns (2007, UK, US)
  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.

• The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe (2006, UK,  US)
  What would the universe be like if human beings were not here to observe it? Would there still be numbers, or scientific laws? Would the universe even be vast, without our tininess to give it scale? The author of award-winning novels (such as "Spies"), plays ("Copenhagen" and "Noises Off") and films ("Clockwise") here produces his first work of non-fiction, one which explores all of the ideas behind his brilliant, funny and hugely popular work.

• Copenhagen in Debate: Historical Essays And Documents on the 1941 Meeting Between Niels Bohr And Werner Heisenberg (2005, UK, US)

• Celia's Secret: An Investigation (UK , US [The Copenhagen Papers: An Intrigue]) by David Burke and Michael Frayn (2000)
  Who is Celia, and what are the mysterious papers found concealed under the attic floorboards of an old country house? Are they simply instructions for assembling a table-tennis table, written in idiosyncratic German, or could they contain a coded message?

• The Additional Michael Frayn (2000, UK, Frayn)
  Many of the humorous essays collected in this volume first appeared in the "Guardian" and the "Observer" newspapers over a three decade span, from the 1970s to the 1990s. Their common feature is Frayn's consideration of communication with inanimate and semi-inanimate objects.

• The Original Michael Frayn (1999, UK, US)
  Before writing the novels and plays which confirmed his reputation, such as "Noises Off" and "Benefactors", Michael Frayn established himself as a writer of humorous columns in the "Guardian" and "Observer" newspapers. This volume contains a collection of 74 extracts from his columns.

• Speak After the Beep: Studies in the Art of  Communicating with Inanimate and Semi-animate Objects (1997, UK, US)
  This is a collection of writings by Michael Frayn, based on his column in The Guardian, covering the pomposities and inanities of public announcements, fashionable conversations, and self-advertising of all kinds.

• Constructions (1974, UK, US)

• At Bay in Gear Street (1967, UK)

• On the Outskirts (1964, UK, US)

• The Book of Fub (1963, UK, US)

• The Day of the Dog (1962, UK, US)

Plays

• The "Crimson Hotel" and "Audience" (2007, UK)
  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.

• Democracy (2003, UK, US)
  In Democracy, Michael Frayn once again creates out of the known events of twentieth-century history a drama of extraordinary urgency and subtlety, reimagining the interactions and motivations of Willy Brandt as he became chancellor of West Germany in 1966 and those of his political circle, including Günter Guillaume, a functionary who became Brandt's personal assistant-and who was eventually exposed as an East German spy in a discovery that helped force Brandt from office. But what circumstances allowed Brandt to become the first left-wing chancellor in forty years? And why, given his progressive policies, did the East German secret police feel it necessary to plant a spy in his office and risk bringing down his government?

• Plays 3 (2001, UK, US)
   Here, Now You Know, and La Belle Vivette

• Alarms and Excursions: More Plays than One (1998, UK, US)
  Four old friends sit down for a quiet evening together. But they are harassed by various bells, warblers, beepers and cheepers, all trying to warn them of something.

• Copenhagen (1998, UK, US) -- Winner Evening Standard Best Play Award in London and the Tony Best Play Award in New York
  In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a strange trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends and close colleagues, and they had revolutionised atomic physics in the 1920s with their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. But now the world had changed, and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. The meeting was fraught with danger and embarrassment, and ended in disaster. Why the German physicist Heisenberg went to Copenhagen in 1942 and what he wanted to say to the Danish physicist Bohr are questions which have exercised historians of nuclear physics ever since. In Michael Frayn's new play Heisenberg meets Bohr and his wife Margrethe once again to look for the answers, and to work out, just as they had once worked out the internal functioning of the atom, how we can ever know why we do what we do.

• La Belle Vivette, a version of Jacques Offenbach's La Belle Hélène (1995, UK, US)

• Now You Know: A Play in Two Acts (1995, UK, US)

• Here (1993, UK, US )

• Plays 2 (1992, UK, US)
  Balmoral, Benefactors, and Wild Honey

• Audience: A Play in One Act (1991, UK, US)

• Jamie on a Flying Visit; and Birthday (1990, UK, US)
  Two plays by the author of "Donkey"s Years", "Noises Off" and "Benefactors". "Jamie on a Flying Visit" charts the gradual destruction of a home by the exuberant but clumsy Jamie, and in "Birthday" pregnant Jess comes to London to visit her student sister on her birthday.

• Listen to This: 21 Short Plays and Monologues (1990, UK, US)
  A collection of short sketches which first appeared in "The Guardian" and "The Observer". The author has written novels such as "A Very Private Life", "Towards the End of Morning" and "The Trick of It", and a number of plays including "Make and Break", "Noises Off" and "The Two of Us".

• Look Look (1990, UK, US)
  Michael Frayn's farce "Noises Off" was about actors at work; this later work shows the other half of the great confrontation which constitutes live theatre - the audience. "Look Look" was first performed at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in April 1990.

• First and Last (1989, UK, US))
  One spring morning a quiet, shy man in his sixties sets out from Land's End to walk the length of his native land. He has never walked more than a dozen miles in his life before, his health is uncertain, his boots are new, and he is too diffident to talk to anyone he meets along the way. His slow, solitary progress up the spine of Britain is watched by an unseen audience - his family and friends at home. How far will he get before he is forced to give up? Is he being heroic or merely selfish? As the days of his absence go by the old alliances and quarrels inside the family shift and alter. What emerges is a story about the arbitrariness of human endeavor and about the tenacious complexity of human relationships; about one man's glimpse of the country he lives in; about courage and about love. "First and Last" was directed by Alan Dossor in a production for "BBC" television, with Joss Ackland as the walker.

• Balmoral (1987, UK, US)

• Plays 1 (1985, UK, US)
  Alphabetical Order, Donkeys' Years, Clouds, Make and Break, and Noises Off

• Benefactors (1984, UK, US)

• Noises Off (1982, UK, US) -- Winner Evening Standard and the Olivier Awards for Best Comedy
  "Noises Off" is not one play but two - simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage farce that develops during Nothing On's final rehearsal and tour. The two farces begin to interlock, as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage, and exit from that only to make their entrances back into Nothing On. In the end, at the disastrous final performance in Stockton-on-Tees, the two farces can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into one single collective nervous breakdown.

• Make and Break (1980, UK, US)

• Alphabetical Order and Donkeys' Years (1977, UK, US)

• Clouds (1977, UK, US)

• The Two of Us: Four One-act Plays for Two Players (1970, UK, US

See also:

• Understanding Michael Frayn (2006, UK, US) by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Merritt Moseley
  Best known for his play "Noises Off", Michael Frayn has garnered widespread critical acclaim and a number of literary honors for his work as a journalist, playwright, novelist, philosopher, and translator. Published in 2002, his novel "Spies" won the Booker Prize and was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize, and he presides as his generation's foremost translator of Anton Chekhov. In this comprehensive assessment of Frayn's varied body of work, Merritt Moseley introduces readers to the accomplishments of one of Britain's most versatile writers. Beginning with Frayn's humorous journalism, which was vital to the "satire boom" of the 1960s, Moseley assesses the entirety of the writer's literary contributions, including his works of philosophy and autobiography. One of the first scholars to consider Frayn seriously as a novelist, Moseley provides careful readings of his fiction, including "The Tin Man", "Sweet Dreams", and "Headlong". Moseley also explores Frayn's development as a playwright, beginning in 1970 with the critically panned "The Two of Us".
  
  From 1970 through 1990, Frayn knew remarkable success for such award-winning plays as "Alphabetical Order" and "Make or Break", as well as disastrous failure with "Look Look". Moseley follows Frayn's career through these highs and lows and beyond to discuss his work for television and the stage, particularly his triumphant recovery with the hit "Copenhagen".