Never Again

Never Again is the second novel by the English writer Francis King (1923–2011), first published in 1947 and long out of print until Valancourt Books reissued it in 2013 with a new introduction by Robert Khan. The novel is strongly autobiographical, drawing on the author's own childhood in India. The protagonist, Hugh Craddock, spends an idyllic early childhood in India but loses everything at a stroke when his parents are killed by locals hostile to British occupation; the young orphan is sent back to England and placed with distant, cold relatives. He is then sent to boarding school, where he never manages to fit in among his classmates. His only consolation is the mutual, intimate friendship he shares with a classmate, Brian Chorley. But Chorley falls gravely ill, and Hugh must face the possibility of loss once more—perhaps the most heartbreaking of all. Written in restrained prose about loss, loneliness, and the stirrings of adolescent feeling, the novel is regarded as one of the author's finest works and was his own favorite.