Coda

Written by Simon Gray

Narrated by Simon Gray

During a holiday with his wife in Crete, the celebrated diarist and playwright Simon Gray recalls the scans and consultations that have dominated the previous months in this frank, moving, and often painfully funny account of what Gray refers to as "the beginning of my dying".

Wonderfully comic depictions of the medical team are interrupted by unforgettable portraits of fellow tourists, digressions on everything from crimes of passion to a brief history of his athletic career, and a masterfully tense distraction, composed while waiting for his final prognosis – and smoking one last cigarette.

Written with a great generosity of spirit and a poignant reluctance to leave this world behind, Simon Gray's Coda was read by the author shortly before his death, in August 2008.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Release date: Dec 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780571250929

Simon Gray

Simon Gray (1936–2008) was a British playwright, novelist and screenwriter. He wrote more than thirty stage plays, amongst them Butley and Otherwise Engaged (which both received Evening Standard Awards for Best Play), Quartermaine's Terms, The Common Pursuit, The Late Middle Classes (winner of the Barclay's Best Play Award), Japes, The Old Masters and Little Nell.