A luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL

Mirrors shatter at the hairdressers when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real.

Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and travel from Ancient myth to an English sweet factory, a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, a Turkish bazaar to a fairytale palace.

Driven by curiosity, Byatt takes her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary and the gloss of the fantastical, to a place rich in ideas, vivid in colour and wholly unforgettable.

'A cabinet of curiosities... Glitteringly beautiful. Byatt is a vivid colourist' Sunday Times

'A cerebral extravaganza, bristling with ideas' Spectator

'These little stories by one of Britain's foremost grandes dames of the writing world are a delightful surprise, packing a much greater punch than many full-length novels... They are moving, thought-provoking, witty and shocking all at once' Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children's Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her 'inspiring contribution to life writing' and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

Reviews
It was a pleasure to be reacquainted with 'Medusa's Ankles'... There's an echo of Iris Murdoch here, herself the subject of several books by Byatt -- Miranda France * Literary Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781784743765
Author A S Byatt
Format Hardback
Page Count 464
Imprint Chatto & Windus
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 704g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 162mm * 41mm