Faith, Hope and Carnage

An extraordinary, uplifting book … This is a book you could dip into if you had no knowledge of Cave at all, just to find someone unafraid to ask all the big questions: what is grief? What is forgiveness? … Everyday carnage has brought forth a book of hope and freedom and life * * Daily Telegraph * *This beautiful book is a lament, a celebration, a howl, a secular prayer, a call to arms, a meditation & an exquisite articulation of the human condition. It will take your breath away – RACHEL CLARKE * * Observer * *Illuminating … a great deal of beauty in Cave’s descriptions of the “strange reckless power” that comes when the worst has happened … if it meets a need for Cave, it also feels like a gift to the reader * * Sunday Times * *An absolutely wonderful book. I don’t think I’ve ever read so integrated and searching an engagement with how faith works, how creativity works, and how grief is bound up with both – ROWAN WILLIAMSA masterpiece * * The Age * *Faith, Hope and Carnage redefines the potential potency of a memoir, creating a bold, brave and brilliant book that deserves to be read, reread and cherished as an illuminating reflection of how we haven’t developed the vocabulary to adequately explore death and its aftermath * * Irish Times * *Ultimately enriching … suffused with love, teeming with ideas * * Guardian * *The most compelling book of the year - raw pain and struggle thought through and explored with rare courage * * New Statesman, Books of the Year * *Immensely eloquent and wise … a tender guide to the transformative potential of grief * * Telegraph, Best Music Books of 2022 * *Cave is one hell of a writer … An extraordinary, one-of-a-kind book … Cave is a miraculously fluent talker, incapable of a dull line. Many of the sentences have an aphoristic punch … It is impossible to overstate how unusual it is to find this depth of self-analysis and wisdom from a rock musician. Faith, Hope and Carnage makes most rock memoirs look like skips full of rusty anecdotes and grudges – DORIAN LYNSKEY * * UnHerd * *

Nick Cave has been performing music for more than fifty years and is best known as the songwriter and lead singer of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, whose latest album, Wild God, was nominated for two Grammy Awards and ranked as the best album of 2024 by Uncut. Cave’s body of work also covers a wider range of media and modes of expression including film score composition and writing of novels. His recent Conversations events and Red Hand Files website have seen Cave exploring deeper and more direct relationships with his fans.

Sean O’Hagan grew up in Northern Ireland. In the 1980s he worked as a music journalist for NME and in the 1990s he began writing on culture for The Times. He has interviewed many major artists, writers and musicians, including Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, Nan Goldin and Joan Didion. In 2003, he was named Interviewer of the Year in the British Press Awards. He currently works as a feature writer for the Observer and is photography critic for the Guardian.