How to be Both
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:16th Apr '15
Should be back in stock very soon
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2015
WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2014
WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD
'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard
How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s.
Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.
*****
'Brims with palpable joy' Daily Telegraph
'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton
'A delight. A masterpiece. Magical' Sunday Times
WINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2014
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014
Ali Smith's new novel, Companion piece, is available now.
Dizzyingly good and so clever that it makes you want to dance * New Statesman *
A delight. A masterpiece. Magical. * Sunday Times *
I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul * Evening Standard *
Exciting, full of joy and wryly funny... [Ali Smith is] one of the most inventive writers alive * Emerald Street *
A remarkably easy and immensely enjoyable read... Ali Smith is a one-off. Her imagination and originality make her one of the most exciting novelists of her generation. Both George and Francesco touch the heart and linger in the mind long after the final page. * Daily Express *
Smith is the brightest spark in a recent explosion of female novelists taking dizzying risks with form and voice . . . most contemporary male authors feel Jurassic by comparison. * Metro *
Rich, funny and moving. Smith's writing really catches fire * Financial Times *
Dazzling * Independent *
This warm, funny book deserves to be read at least one-and-a-half times -- Honor Clerk * Spectator *
Radical, dazzling . . . Those writers making doomy predictions about the death of the novel should read Smith's re-imagined novel/s, and take note of the life it contains * Independent *
- Winner of Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015
- Short-listed for Folio Prize 2015
- Short-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2014
- Short-listed for Costa Novel Award 2014
- Short-listed for Goldsmiths Prize 2014
ISBN: 9780141025209
Dimensions: 198mm x 128mm x 28mm
Weight: 270g
384 pages