Jeanette Winterson - Author
About the Author
Jeanette Winterson OBE is the author of ten novels, including Oranges are not the Only Fruit, The Passion and Sexing the Cherry; a book of short stories, The World and Other Places; a collection of essays, Art Objects as well as many other works, including children's books, screenplays and journalism. Her writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E. M. Forster Award and the Prix d'argent at Cannes Film Festival.
Featured books by Jeanette Winterson
Frankissstein
Darkly playful, Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein is an astonishing intertextual re-conjuring of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, melding an interpretation of Shelley’s novel and life with an exploration of what it is to be human, freedom, sex, gender and love. It’s thought-provoking, thrilling, and funny to boot. Contextualised in - and interspersed with - Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein, we are transported to Memphis where modern-day transgender Dr Ry Shelley attends a robotics expo to “consider how robots will affect our mental and physical health.” Here Ry encounters Ron, the Welsh inventor of a new range of Sexbots he believes will provide a woman to satisfy every male need, from deluxe bots who can hold a conversation (“she waits till you’re finished, of course, no interrupting”), to Germaine, a “70s feminist version with no bra, messy hair and a dildo for anal play”. It’s at the expo that Ry first encounters - and later falls for - Professor Victor Stein, a leader in the field of Artificial Intelligence who has dealings with The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, an Arizona facility that processes dead bodies with the aim of indefinitely extending life. Alongside the love story, and the juxtaposition of Frankenstein with contemporary conversations around A.I., the novel also addresses Brexit, bigotry, racism and English insularity: “The English are serial racists – one group gets accepted, another group becomes the scapegoat”. And back in Shelley’s day, England is described as, "small-minded, smug, self-righteous, unjust, a country that hates the stranger, whether that stranger be a foreigner or an atheist, or a poet, or a thinker, or a radical, or a woman.” Profound, absurd and mischievous, this is an incisive, suggestive romp for our times.
Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere
'Behind every great woman is a man who tried to stop her.' A century on from the first votes for women in the UK, award-winning author Jeanette Winterson asks what we still stand to learn from the Suffragettes. Examining recent women's rights movements, the worlds of politics and technology, social media and changes in the law, Winterson celebrates how far we have come but demands that we do more. There is still so far to go, so much courage we still need to find. Witty and wise, incisive and inspiring, Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere is a powerful reminder of the need for true equality and an urgent call to arms.
Christmas Days 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days
There are ghosts here and jovial spirits. Chances at love and tricks with time. There is frost and icicles, mistletoe and sledges. There's a cat and a dog and a solid silver frog. There's a Christmas cracker with a surprising gift inside. There's a haunted house and a SnowMama. There are Yuletides and holly wreaths. Three Kings. And a merry little Christmas time. And for the icing on the Christmas cake, there are twelve festive recipes from Yuletides past and present. Red cabbage, gravlax, turkey biryani, sherry trifle, Mrs Winterson's mince pies and more.
The Gap of Time The Winter's Tale Retold
'I saw the strangest sight tonight.' New Bohemia. America. A storm. A black man finds a white baby abandoned in the night. He gathers her up - light as a star - and decides to take her home. London. England. After the financial crash. Leo Kaiser knows how to make money but he doesn't know how to manage the jealousy he feels towards his best friend and his wife. Is the newborn baby even his? New Bohemia. 17 years later. A boy and a girl are falling in love but there's a lot they don't know about who they are and where they come from.
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days' ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.
Why be Happy When You Could be Normal?
A 2013 World Book Night selection. Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 'UK Author of the Year' 2012. A companion to Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, allowing Jeanette Winterson to explore the truth (often far worse than the fictionalised version) behind her autobiographical novel. The power of the written word to a child is brilliantly captured, books allowing the author to escape and find her own life – to write her own words.Like for Like ReadingBad Blood, Lorna SageOnce in a House on Fire, Andrea Ashworth In 1990 Jeanette Winterson published her funny, erudite, semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are not the only Fruit about a young girl growing up in an evangelical family rebelling religiously, socially and sexually. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is the brilliant doppelganger to this novel, a memoir about belonging, exploring Winterson’s search for her birth mother, but also her love and relationship with books, as she writes, “Books don’t make a home…they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.” Brilliant for all fanatic readers and writers. Susanna Crossman, from our Best Autobiographies Ever Blog.
Other books by Jeanette Winterson
12 Bytes
'Briskly and breezily, 12 Bytes joins the dots in a neglected narrative of female scientists, visionaries and code-breakers' Observer Twelve eye-opening, mind-expanding and provocative essays from Sunday Times-bestselling author Jeanette Winterson Drawing on her years of thinking and reading about Artificial Intelligence in its bewildering manifestations, Jeanette Winterson looks to history, religion, myth, literature, politics and, of course, computer science, to help us understand the radical changes to the way we live and love that are happening now. With wit, compassion and curiosity, Winterson tackles AI's most interesting talking points, from the algorithms that data-dossier your whole life, to the weirdness of backing up your brain. 'Her writing engulfs you in lucid, fairytale-like realities that take you on gender-bending and time-warped explorations of religion, love, sex, and sexual identity.' Independent *A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES AND EVENING STANDARD*
The Daylight Gate
'Utterly compulsive' Daily Telegraph 'A gripping gothic read' Sarah Hall, Guardian 'So seductive ... I was hooked' Independent The Forest of Pendle used to be a hunting ground, but some say that the hill is the hunter - alive in its black-and-green coat cropped like an animal pelt. Good Friday, 1612. Two notorious witches await trial and certain death in Lancaster Castle, whilst a small group gathers in secret protest. Into this group the self-made Alice Nutter stakes her claim and swears to fight against the rule of fear. But what is Alice's connection to these witches? What is magic if not power, and what will happen to the women who possess it?
Hansel and Greta
Jeanette Winterson retells 'Hansel and Gretel'. A Fairy Tale Revolution is here to remix and revive our favourite stories. 'Deep in the wood' Greta lives with her brother Hansel on the edge of a great forest - a forest in danger of destruction. GreedyGuts, their aunt, doesn't appreciate Hansel and Greta's plans to replant trees and save the forest. In fact, she thinks they're horrible little vegetarians. GreedyGuts doesn't give two hoots about nature. She favours luxury and living it up: eating, shopping and partying hard. And so she hatches a plan to get rid of the meddling, do-gooder kids...deep in the wood.
Frankissstein
***LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2020** **LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2020** 'Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.' Inspired by Mary Shelley's gothic classic Frankenstein, discover this audacious new novel about the bodies we live in and the bodies we desire. As Brexit grips Britain, Ry, a young transgender doctor, is falling in love. The object of their misguided affection: the celebrated AI-specialist, Professor Victor Stein. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his Mum again, is set to make his fortune with a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Ranging from 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley pens her radical first novel, to a cryonics facility in present-day Arizona where the dead wait to return to life, Frankissstein shows us how much closer we are to the future than we realise. 'Intelligent and inventive...very funny' The Times 'One of the most gifted writers working today' New York Times
Midsummer Nights: Tales from the Opera:
With Kate Atkinson, Sebastian Barry, Anne Enright, Alexander McCall Smith, Andrew O'Hagan, Kate Mosse, Andrew Motion, Colm Toibin, Joanna Trollope, Ali Smith, Jeanette Winterson & more In this stunning collection, the best and brightest writers working today reimagine familiar stories from the greatest operas. Don Giovanni's ghost haunts a young boy, Fidelio meets Porgy and Bess and two hapless men stage a Mozartian love test. Long-lost loves enter the dating game and undying witches finally get grey hairs. Funny, macabre or irreverent, these stories are charming for any opera lover and a beguiling collection in their own right.
Weight
Condemned to shoulder the world forever by the gods he dared defy, freedom seems unattainable to Atlas. But then he receives an unexpected visit from Heracles, the one man strong enough to share the burden . . . Jeanette Winterson's retelling of the myth of Atlas and Heracles asks difficult and eternal questions about the nature of choice and coercion. Visionary and inventive, Weight turns the familiar on its head to show us ourselves in a new light. The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.
Love
How do we love? With romance. With work. Through heartbreak. Throughout a lifetime. As a means, but not an end. Love in all its forms has been an abiding theme of Jeanette Winterson's writing. Here are selections from her books about that impossible, essential force, stories and truths that search for the mythical creature we call Love. Selected from the books of Jeanette Winterson VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Eating by Nigella Lawson Jealousy by Marcel Proust Babies by Anne Enright Desire by Haruki Murakami
Christmas Days
For years Jeanette Winterson has loved writing a new story at Christmastime, and here she brings together twelve of her brilliantly imaginative, funny, and bold tales. For the Twelve Days of Christmas-a time of celebration, sharing, and giving-she offers these twelve plus one: a personal story of her own Christmas memories.These tales open a portal into the spirit of the season, when time slows down and magic starts to happen. From trees with mysterious powers to a tinsel baby that talks, philosophical fairies to flying dogs, a haunted house to a disappearing train, Winterson's innovative stories encompass the childlike and spooky wonder of Christmas, perfect for listening to by the fire with loved ones or while traveling home for the holidays.Enjoy the season of peace and goodwill, mystery, and a little bit of magic courtesy of one of our most fearless and accomplished writers.
Christmas Days 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days
There are ghosts here and jovial spirits. Chances at love and tricks with time. There is frost and icicles, mistletoe and sledges. There's a cat and a dog and a solid silver frog. There's a Christmas cracker with a surprising gift inside. There's a haunted house and a SnowMama. There are Yuletides and holly wreaths. Three Kings. And a merry little Christmas time. And for the icing on the Christmas cake, there are twelve festive recipes from Yuletides past and present. Red cabbage, gravlax, turkey biryani, sherry trifle, Mrs Winterson's mince pies and more.
Gap of Time
The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's ';late plays.' It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited. In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson's cover version of The Winter's Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.From the Hardcover edition.
Written on the Body
'This book is a deep, sensual plunge, a worship of the body, inside and out' The Times In a quiet English suburb, a love affair ignites. For our nameless narrator, Louise is the last in a long line of explosive passions, but the first to have broken their heart. With Louise's husband, Elgin, blocking love's course, their affair is doomed to unravel - until, that is, a terrible choice must be made. With its witty and masterful prose, Written on the Body takes the reader on a beguiling and defying exploration of love and its physical forms. 'An ambitious work, at once a love story and a philosophical meditation on the body' Sunday Telegraph
The Powerbook
'Winterson is a rangy pirate, a world-swashbuckler, a plunderer of stories, literatures and hearts' Ali Smith, Scotsman 'It's night. I'm sitting at my screen. There's an e-mail for me. I unwrap it. It says - Freedom, just for one night.' Ali, or Alix, is an e-writer. They will write anything you like, but on one condition: that you are prepared to enter your story. Finally, you can be the hero of your own life. But, there is a price to pay - the risk that you might leave the story as somebody else. 'Brilliant, evocative writing... Winterson never seems to put a foot wrong... It is funny, clever, entertaining and wholly delightful' Spectator
The Passion
'A fantasy, a vivid dream...inventive and brilliant' Guardian Henri has a passion for Napoleon - but Napoleon has a passion for chicken. As soldier and emperor butcher their way across Europe, glory falls to ruin and love turns to hate. But, when Henri encounters the red-haired, web-footed Villanelle, he discovers in her an equal. Together they abandon their pasts, and flee to the Venetian canals to meet their singular destiny in the city of chance and disguises. 'A deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so.' New York Times
Sexing the Cherry
'A book of innocence and bawdiness, fury and joy...needs to be read and re-read' The Times On the banks of the Thames a baby is found floating. Rescued by the Dog-Woman, a giant strong enough to fling an elephant into the air, their lives together will take them on a dizzying journey through space and time. As past and present collapse and centuries overlap, love, sex, truth, lies and twelve dancing princesses take centre stage. 'Entrancing...fabulous... Its language retains the clear music of poetry' Sunday Telegraph 'Simple prose shows the subtlest of minds behind it, swift, confident and dazzling' Financial Times 'Her stories and characters levitate off the page into dancing life... A bold, bizarre and timely book' Independent
Art & Lies
'Brave and ambitious' Independent In a near-future London, Sappho, Picasso and Handel each set upon the same plan - to flee the city by train. Finding themselves fellow passengers, the poet, the painter and the musician discover their fates drawn together by the curious agency of a book. As stories within stories unfold and journeys intersect, another world comes to the fore - one of painful beauty, where language has the power to heal. 'Winterson's belief in love, beauty, and most of all, language, is evangelical and redemptive...it is timely and exciting to read' Rachel Cusk, The Times
Gut Symmetries
Travelling across the Atlantic on board the QE2, Alice - a bright, young physicist - meets Jove, short for Giovanni, one of the world's most respected experts on time travel and a confirmed lothario. By the time the pair land in New York, Alice has become Jove's mistress, an affair of the heart which is only complicated further when Alice meets Jove's, wife, Stella; a tempestuous beauty born with a diamond at the base of her spine. As this love triangle turns into a menage-a-trois, Alice, Stella and Jove struggle against the currents immersing them, while their romance pulls into its wake the stories of other generations, philosophies, quantum physics and time travel. A celebration of the human heart in all its frailty, confusion and excess, Gut Symmetries is a lyrical evocation of parallel lives, loves and universes, from one of Britain's best loved authors.