'My mother began me one evening in 1968 on a table in the cafe of the town's only cinema . . .'

One hot summer a stranger arrives at the Norfolk holiday home of the Smart family. Intriguing, beguiling, arresting, Amber brings love, joy, pain and not a little upheaval, throwing the carefully ordered world of the Smarts into the air. They will be forever changed by Amber but how will they know whether it is for the bad, the good or something else entirely?

'Joyous ... writing as rapture, as giddy delight' The Times

'Funny, sexy, poignant, bewitching' Observer

The award-winning novel by Booker-shortlistee Ali Smith, now a Penguin Essential.

About the Author
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.

Reviews
Brilliant and engaging, frequently hilarious, exhilaratingly sharp-eyed . . . Smith makes one look at the world afresh * Sunday Telegraph *
Joyous, a shot across the bows . . . writing as rapture, as giddy delight * The Times *
An astonishing book - funny and moving, playful and shocking. It is what one hopes for in a modern novel, and yet it confounds all expectations. It is complex. It is beautiful. It is exhilarating. It is fiction at its most artful * Financial Times *
A beguiling page-turner ... a brilliant creation. To read The Accidental is to be excited from first to last * Independent *
Smith's novels fizz with pyrotechnic prose, whirl-wind openings, bewitching invention * Observer *
Exuberantly inventive ... at once dazzlingly bright and profoundly dark * Sunday Times *


Awards
Winner of Whitbread Novel Award.



Book Information
ISBN 9780241989111
Author Ali Smith
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 176g
Dimensions(mm) 181mm * 111mm * 19mm