Search results for ""A S Byatt" "Elementals""

Book Synopsis**FEATURING THE STORY THAT INSPIRED NEW FILM THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING**A S Byatt''s fairy tales and fables are among the best-loved features of her fiction. Innumerable readers have asked for the two marvellous fairy tales in POSSESSION - ''The Glass Coffin'' and ''Gode''s Tale'' of the Breton Naie des Trepasses - to be published separately.Here they take their place with three other stories with medieval and middle eastern settings. The title story, ''The Djinn and the Nightingale''s Eye'', a long story about an Englishwoman in Turkey who unwittingly releases a genie from his bottle, is a reflection on women''s lives, on magic and on the power of storytelling itself, and has inspired the new film Three Thousand Years of Longing starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.Trade ReviewThose new to the world of Byatt might well begin here, with these tales-within-tales, which one can read as anything from contemporary allegories - such as the superb Dragon's Breath, evoking every idyll that ever fell foul of war or famine - to sheer celebrations of storytelling itself * Vogue *The familiar elements of fairy story come to life under A.S. Byatt's touch...with lightness, precision, grace * Observer *A cerebral extravaganza, bristling with ideas * Spectator *The fairy story is obviously a form that fascinates A.S. Byatt, it suits her spare, cool prose and this collection enables her to create very different effects... a beautifully produced book * Financial Times *

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Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. S. BYATT'She is undoubtedly one of the twentieth century's greatest American writers' OBSERVER' . . . a clear-eyed salute to the resilience of the human spirit and the innate hardiness of the immigrants' XAN BROOKS, GUARDIAN 'Willa Cather was a wordsmith of enormous talent' ROBERT SLAYTON, LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS'During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood . . . His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her'My Antonia is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman's life on the Nebraska plains, seen through the eyes of her childhood friend, Jim Burden. The beautiful, free-spirited, wild-eyed girl captured Jim's imagination long ago and haunts him still, embodying for him the elemental spirit of the American frontier.In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction.Trade ReviewShe is undoubtedly one of the twentieth century's greatest American writers * Observer *In fact it's one of the warmest, most quietly rousing books that I know; a clear-eyed salute to the resilience of the human spirit and the innate hardiness of the immigrants who came across the ocean to start afresh in the golden west -- Xan Brooks * Guardian *Willa Cather was a wordsmith of enormous talent -- Robert Slayton * Los Angeles Review of Books *Willa Cather makes a world which is burningly alive, sometimes lovely, often tragicHer voice, laconical and richly sensuous, sings out with a note of unequivocal love for the people she is setting down on the page

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