Gliff

By: Ali Smith

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Paperback | 5 August 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Format
Paperback

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 13.0 x 1.9

Paperback

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The first of two new interconnected novels from bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted author Ali Smith

O brave new world, that has such people in't.

Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.

What does it mean?

It's a truism of our time that it'll be the next generation who'll sort out our increasingly toxic world.

What would that actually be like?

In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?

And what's a horse got to do with any of this?

Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it's a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.

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.

Industry Reviews

Fizzily fresh and vibrant . . . A dark vision brightened by the engaging craft of an inventive writer -- Kirkus (starred review)

Here is a voice that moves with lightness and precision, where bravery and goodness triumph in spirit over jeopardy and fear . . . Smith is good at fable-ising, and at taking a young perspective in order to question afresh systems and inherited knowledge . . . Smith’s fiction teaches with vitality that there is no such thing as a futile question -- Financial Times

A literary collosus . . . Gliff is playful, challenging, and like nothing else we’ve recommended this year! -- Bookshop Tales

Ali Smith stakes her claim amongst the most inventive living British writers . . . Gliff is another fizzing firework display, with conceptual shenanigans and running prose put in the service of hot-button social issues . . . a freewheeling narrative that mixes jeopardy-laden drama with restless digression on everything from agrochemicals to AI -- Daily Mail

The inimitable Ali Smith returns to beguile . . . Smith movingly explores the notion of resistance, and asks, in a voice full of hope, what a world should, and could, be -- Harper’s Bazaar

One of our most playful and political writers -- Guardian, 'Books to Look Forward to'

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