Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is William Golding's harrowing parable of civilization's fragility, depicting a group of British schoolboys who descend into savagery after being stranded on a deserted island. Golding, who received the Nobel Prize in 1983, crafted a dark inversion of the adventure-story tradition, revealing the violence and tribalism lurking beneath the veneer of civilized behavior. The novel's unflinching vision of human nature has made it one of the most widely taught and discussed works of twentieth-century fiction.

Published in the shadow of the Second World War and the early Cold War, Lord of the Flies reflected a deep disillusionment with the idea of inherent human goodness that had been shattered by the horrors of totalitarianism, genocide, and atomic warfare. Golding drew on his own wartime naval experience to challenge comforting assumptions about progress and civilization, producing a novel that remains a core educational text across the English-speaking world.