How to be Both (Paperback) - Ali Smith

Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, this book features forms, times, truths and fictions.

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.

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.