Somehow, somewhere, Sammy Mountjoy lost his freedom, the faculty of freewill ‘that cannot be debated but only experienced, like a colour or the taste of potatoes’. As he retraces his life in an effort to discover why he no longer has the power to choose and decide for himself, the narrative moves between England and a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.

In Free Fall, his fourth novel, William Golding has created a poetic fiction, and an allegory, as moving as it is unforgettable.