Faith, Hope and Carnage

A meditation on faith, art, music, grief and much more - from cultural icon and bestselling author Nick Cave

Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave's inner life.Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with the journalist Seán O'Hagan, this is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave's own words, of what really drives his life and creativity.The book examines questions of belief, art, music, freedom, grief and love. It draws candidly on Cave's life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years.Faith, Hope and Carnage offers ladders of hope and inspiration from a true creative visionary.

Review "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 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"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 WILLIAMS"A fascinating read . . . O'Hagan is skilled at drilling down to discover the most interesting conversational nubs, but it is Cave's words that are the star of the show. The man talks like he is writing poetry and the manner in which he describes making music is sure to delight both fans and casual listeners" ― Independent"Remarkably candid . . . the culmination of a prolonged and moving period of reflection . . . One of Cave's greatest skills is to bring a secular eye to the religious and a religious eye to the secular, the sacred and the profane intertwined" ― New Statesman"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"Nick Cave never fails to be unerringly frank, self-interrogative and insightful" ― Guardian"This fascinating book is speckled with wisdom and rich in ideas. It is an entirely unpretentious stroll by two friends through matters big and small" ― Scotsman"Faith, Hope and Carnage stands, at once, as a loving tribute to his late son, and ultimately to God - a book that fuses his humour, intellect, wit and passion into one long philosophical meditation on living and dying" ― Irish Independent"O'Hagan effectively mines the deepest and sometimes darkest reaches of Cave's perpetually curious and creative mind, and it is touching just how frank Cave endeavours to be . . . a wonderful read, a revealing, illuminating, educational study of one of the most free and original artists of our time" ― Big Issue

About the Author

Nick Cave has been performing music for more than forty years and is best known as the songwriter and lead singer of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, whose latest album Ghosteen was widely received as their best work ever. 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.