bIn 1953, William Golding was a provincial schoolteacher writing books on his breaks, lunch hours and holidays.b His work had been rejected by every major publisher--until an editor at Faber and Faber pulled his manuscript off the rejection pile. This was to become iLord of the Flies, ia book that would sell in the millions and bring Golding worldwide recognition. pGolding went on to become one of the most popular and influential British authors to have emerged since World War II. He received the Booker Prize for the novel iRites of Passage iin 1980, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Stephen King has stated that the Castle Rock in iLord of the Flies icontinues to inspire him, so much so that he named his entertainment company after it and has placed the Golding novel prominently in his novels iHearts in Atlantis iand iCujoi. Golding has been called a British Vonnegut--disheveled and darkly humorous, perverse when it would have been easier to be bitter, bitter when it would ha