A short life of the author
Adam Foulds (b. 1974) is a British novelist and poet. He studied English at Oxford and creative writing at the University of East Anglia. He was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013.
Life and Career
Foulds’s debut novel, The Truth About These Strange Times (2007), was followed by the verse narrative The Broken Word (2008) — about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya — which won the Costa Poetry Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.
The Quickening Maze (2009) — set in Matthew Allen’s High Beech asylum in Epping Forest in the 1830s, where the poet John Clare was confined alongside Alfred Tennyson’s brother Septimus — was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It is a novel of extraordinary atmospheric density, evoking Victorian England and the boundaries between sanity and madness, poetry and delusion.
Major Works and Themes
Foulds writes about history through the lens of individual consciousness. His prose is lyrical without being ornamental — precise, attentive to the physical world, and structured around moments of perception rather than plot. In the Wolf’s Mouth (2014) — about the Allied campaign in North Africa and Sicily — extends this project on a broader canvas.
Key Works
- The Broken Word (2008) — Costa Poetry Award
- The Quickening Maze (2009) — Booker shortlist
- In the Wolf’s Mouth (2014)
Collecting Foulds
The Quickening Maze first edition (Jonathan Cape, 2009) brings $30–$60 signed. Foulds is not prolific; his small body of work makes collecting manageable.