A luminous selection of short stories from the Booker prize-winning A. S. Byatt, celebrating over thirty years of writing

With an introduction by David Mitchell

Byatt takes her readers to a place that is rich in ideas, vivid in colour and wholly unforgettable. 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.

Peopled by artists, poets and fabulous creatures, these stories travel from the ancient mythic world to an English sweet factory, a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace. Blazing with creativity, they show what lies beneath the veneer of the ordinary, and reveal the fantastical possibilities beyond.

"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

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.