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Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, and Public Library and other stories. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.
Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer's leaves? Dead litter. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there's ice, there'll be fire. In Ali Smith's Winter, lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons.
October 2017 Book of the Month | Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017. From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, and a story about ageing and time and love and stories themselves. Here comes Autumn. On being Longlisted for the Man Booker prize Ali Smith said; "A lovely surprise – I'm very very chuffed – but especially to be on this longlist, in such bloody good company". You can read an interview with her on the Man Booker website here.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017. From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, and a story about ageing and time and love and stories themselves. Here comes Autumn.
Winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015. Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2014. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 this is an unusual and highly inventive novel. It is in fact two related novellas. In one we meet George, a 16 year old girl whose mother has just died and who’s trying to navigate her own grief whilst keeping her father away from a quick descent to alcoholism and protect her brother from his grief. This story shifts between the present and a time before her mother’s death so we discover a little more about their relationship. Crucially George’s mother introduces her to the work of an Italian renaissance artist, Francesco del Cossa, just before she dies and George plays truant to visit the National Gallery to see more of his work and work through her grief. The other story sees the ghost of Francesco summoned suddenly to the National Gallery in 21st Century London to be the familiar of a girl called George who’s becoming strangely obsessed with Francesco. The stories can and are designed to be read in either order and indeed copies were printed with the story order changed so some readers get it one way and others the other. Complicated but hugely rewarding and a fascinating way of absorbing a story. The Costa Judges said Smith's novel was “Dazzlingly imagined and daringly inventive, it’s both resonant and moving.” Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2014. Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2014. One of our Books of the Year 2014.
Winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015. Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2014. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 this is an unusual and highly inventive novel. It is in fact two related novellas. In one we meet George, a 16 year old girl whose mother has just died and who’s trying to navigate her own grief whilst keeping her father away from a quick descent to alcoholism and protect her brother from his grief. This story shifts between the present and a time before her mother’s death so we discover a little more about their relationship. Crucially George’s mother introduces her to the work of an Italian renaissance artist, Francesco del Cossa, just before she dies and George plays truant to visit the National Gallery to see more of his work and work through her grief. The other story sees the ghost of Francesco summoned suddenly to the National Gallery in 21st Century London to be the familiar of a girl called George who’s becoming strangely obsessed with Francesco. The stories can and are designed to be read in either order and indeed copies were printed with the story order changed so some readers get it one way and others the other. Complicated but hugely rewarding and a fascinating way of absorbing a story. The Costa Judges said Smith's novel was “Dazzlingly imagined and daringly inventive, it’s both resonant and moving.” Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2014. Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2014. One of our Books of the Year 2014.
There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party ...' As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear. There but for the has been hailed as one of the best books of 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner and Nick Barley.
This review is provided by bookgroup.info.The setting is Norfolk in the long hot summer of 2003. The Smart family are staying in a miserable cottage for the holidays while the war in Iraq rumbles in the background. The story is told in turn from the point of view of the four family members; Astrid a bright, video camera wielding, twelve year old girl; Magnus her seventeen year old brother, traumatised by the suicide of a bullied classmate for which he feels partly responsible; Eve the children’s mother, a writer with writer’s block, and Michael their lecherous, lecturer step-father. If it all sounds rather tediously familiar so far but don’t despair. Events take a turn when a mysterious blonde female stranger infiltrates their lives. But who is Amber? Eve supposes she’s one of Michael’s lovers. Michael supposes she’s come to interview Eve and the kids are just glad there’s someone else there to relieve the tedium. No-one challenges her appearance at the house and all four are seduced by her and ultimately forced to re-examine their lives. This is just the story. The book’s tour de force is Ali Smith’s use of language. She is clever, funny and completely unpretentious. I particularly like the (totally believable) voice of twelve year old Astrid:“They’re all asleep. Nobody knows she is awake. Nobody is any the wiser. Any the Wiser sounds like a character from ancient history. Astrid in the year 1003BC (Before Celebrity) goes to the woods where Any the Wiser………” and so it goes on as we enter Astrid’s stream of consciousness. This is the contemporary novel at its best - rich and satisfying.The Lovereading view...The engrossing tale of a middle-class family and the events that unfold when a stranger steps into their midst. Amber's arrival changes the family's lives dramatically as she quickly bonds with the Smarts, bewitching them all. Smith's writing is fantastic, capturing the voices of all the characters superbly, but especially that of the adolescent Astrid who steals the show. On the Orange Fiction Prize 2006 short list and utterly compelling.
Category Winner of the Whitbread Novel Award 2005 and short listed for the Man Booker. The engrossing tale of a middle-class family and the events that unfold when a stranger steps into their midst. Amber's arrival changes the family's lives dramatically as she quickly bonds with the Smarts, bewitching them all. Smith's writing is fantastic, capturing the voices of all the characters superbly, but especially that of the adolescent Astrid who steals the show. Utterly compelling.
A richly inventive new collection of stories from Ali Smith, author of How to be both, winner of the Baileys Women's Prize and the Costa Novel Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us? What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make. Public libraries are places of joy, freedom, community and discovery - and right now they are under threat from funding cuts and widespread closures across the UK and further afield. With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.
Punand in paralel povestile efervescente pe care le au de spus un pictor italian renascentist si o adolescenta moderna, aceasta carte exploreaza iubirea, arta si domeniul posibilitatii cu o extraordinara prospetime, ceea ce i a adus o nominalizare pe lista finalistilor la premiul Man Booker si premiul Goldsmith pentru originalitate."e; The GuardianSuferinE a doliului este ntipA ritA n vieE ile celor douA eroine orfane de mamA ale lui Smith, dar, n ciuda nverE unatei lipse de sentimentalism E i a seriozitA E ii profunde a ntrebA rilor pe care le pune, romanul Cum sA fii E i una, E i alta e plin de entuziasm nu numai faE A de limbaj, literaturA E i puterea transformatoare a artei, ci E i faE A de ncurcatele dileme ale unei vieE i de om, cnd ai vrea sA fii mai multe deodatA , nu doar sA te ncadrezi ntro singurA categorie de persoane. DorinE a de a nu fi nici aE a, nici altfel deschide posibilitA E i care nseamnA cA te poE i strA dui mereu, pentru totdeauna, sA fii E i una, E i alta. Cu mare subtilitate E i inventivitate, Smith continuA sA extindA graniE ele romanului."e; The TelegraphNu existA nici o ndoialA cA Smith e de o ndrA znealA ameE itoare. EE ti luat pe sus de forE a inovatoare a romanului pnA cnd ajungi, cu respiraE ia tA iatA , la ultima paginA ."e; The Observer Acei scriitori care fac predicE ii apocaliptice despre moartea romanului ar trebui sA citeascA romanul reinventat al lui Smith E i sA observe cu atenE ie ctA viaE A cuprinde."e; The Independent
The crow crossed the sky, slow-beating her wings. Beat, beat, beat. It was night, not yet morning, and her feathers were so black that she coasted the air invisible above the city wall. Thus begins Ali Smith's masterful retelling of Sophocles' tragedy about a young Theban princess, who decides to bury her dishonoured brother Polynices against King Creon's express orders - with heart-breaking consequences. Vividly told and wonderfully illustrated, Smith's Antigone is the perfect introduction to Greek tragedy for any reader, young or old.
Winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015. Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2014. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 this is an unusual and highly inventive novel. It is in fact two related novellas. In one we meet George, a 16 year old girl whose mother has just died and who’s trying to navigate her own grief whilst keeping her father away from a quick descent to alcoholism and protect her brother from his grief. This story shifts between the present and a time before her mother’s death so we discover a little more about their relationship. Crucially George’s mother introduces her to the work of an Italian renaissance artist, Francesco del Cossa, just before she dies and George plays truant to visit the National Gallery to see more of his work and work through her grief. The other story sees the ghost of Francesco summoned suddenly to the National Gallery in 21st Century London to be the familiar of a girl called George who’s becoming strangely obsessed with Francesco. The stories can and are designed to be read in either order and indeed copies were printed with the story order changed so some readers get it one way and others the other. Complicated but hugely rewarding and a fascinating way of absorbing a story. The Costa Judges said Smith's novel was “Dazzlingly imagined and daringly inventive, it’s both resonant and moving.” Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2014. Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2014. One of our Books of the Year 2014.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. 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.
The crow crossed the sky, slow-beating her wings. Beat, beat, beat. It was night, not yet morning, and her feathers were so black that she coasted the air invisible above the city wall. Thus begins Ali Smith's retelling of Sophocles' tragedy, about a young Theban princess who decides to bury her dishonoured brother Polynices, against King Creon's express orders with heart-breaking consequences.
Winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015. Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2014. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 this is an unusual and highly inventive novel. It is in fact two related novellas. In one we meet George, a 16 year old girl whose mother has just died and who’s trying to navigate her own grief whilst keeping her father away from a quick descent to alcoholism and protect her brother from his grief. This story shifts between the present and a time before her mother’s death so we discover a little more about their relationship. Crucially George’s mother introduces her to the work of an Italian renaissance artist, Francesco del Cossa, just before she dies and George plays truant to visit the National Gallery to see more of his work and work through her grief. The other story sees the ghost of Francesco summoned suddenly to the National Gallery in 21st Century London to be the familiar of a girl called George who’s becoming strangely obsessed with Francesco. The stories can and are designed to be read in either order and indeed copies were printed with the story order changed so some readers get it one way and others the other. Complicated but hugely rewarding and a fascinating way of absorbing a story. The Costa Judges said Smith's novel was “Dazzlingly imagined and daringly inventive, it’s both resonant and moving.” Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2014. Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2014. One of our Books of the Year 2014.
Rachel Kneebone (born 1973, Oxfordshire) is a London-based artist internationally renowned for her porcelain sculptures that intricately fuse human, natural and abstract forms to explore universal themes such as sexual desire, mortality, anguish and despair. Launched in anticipation of`399 Days', Kneebone's latest presentation at White Cube, London, in summer 2014, this publication features works from Kneebone's acclaimed solo exhibition at Brooklyn Museum in 2012, which included eight of the artist's works in dialogue with fifteen bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Featuring a foreword by Catherine Morris and a text by Ali Smith, this beautifully designed and produced hardback publication contains over fifty colour reproductions and has been developed with support from Brooklyn Museum.
A small girl's fight against male authority The crow crossed the sky, slow-beating her wings. Beat, beat, beat. It was night, not yet morning, and her feathers were so black that she coasted the air invisible above the city wall. Thus begins Ali Smith's retelling of Sophocles' tragedy, about a young Theban princess, who decides to bury her dishonoured brother Polynices, against King Creon's express orders-with heart-breaking consequences. Ali Smith was born in Inverness, where she was quite good at ice-skating and spent a lot of time on the back of a black Shetland pony called Hodrum. When she was about seven years old she began to write stories and poems. The first poem that she remembers writing was about a girl called Isabel debating with an adder, which was threatening to bite her, about which of them would live the longest. (Isabel won.)
Originally four lectures given at Oxford University, Ali Smith's Artful is a tidal wave of ideas. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. Full of both the poignancy and humour of fiction and all the sideways insights and jaunty angles you would expect from Ali Smith's criticism, it explores form, style, life, love, death, mortality, immortality and what art and writing can mean. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and the Orange prize, and winner of the Encore Award and the Arts Council Scottish Book Award, Ali Smith is one of our most interesting writers at work today. Artful shows her at her most innovative, warm and generous best. Praise for Artful: 'Artful is a revelation; a new kind of book altogether . . . it could have only been written by Ali Smith. It will open doors for writers; a kind of Room of One's Own for today's readers. Only Smith won't stay in one room. An intimate study of grief; Artful makes you glad to be alive' Jackie Kay 'Smart, allusive, informal, playful, audacious' Independent 'Ali Smith's latest book once again finds her testing the boundaries of genre . . . powerful and moving' London Review of Books 'Artful transports the reader to this magical terrain . . . with its blending of criticism and fiction, Artful belongs in a genre of its own . . . a joyful and optimistic paean to the healing powers of art. It will be entertaining reading for anyone interested in the art of writing, and also of living, well' Anita Sethi, New Statesman 'A brilliant and moving book and as delightfully dodgy as the character from Oliver Twist whom the title evokes' Claire Harman, Evening Standard Books of the Year Praise for Ali Smith: 'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph 'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton 'A true and valuable British original' Nick Hornby 'Smith's love of language lights up all her books . . . she's someone to relish' The New York Times Book Review Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of There but for the, Free Love, Like, Hotel World, Other Stories and Other Stories, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy and The First Person and Other Stories.
There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party ...' As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear. There but for the has been hailed as one of the best books of 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner and Nick Barley.
There but for the is the sparkling satirical novel by bestselling Ali Smith 'There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party . . .' As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear. There but for the was hailed as one of the best books of 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner and Nick Barley. 'Dazzlingly inventive' A.S. Byatt 'Whimsically devastating. Playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting' Guardian 'A real gem' Erica Wagner, The Times 'Eccentric, adventurous, intoxicating, dazzling. This is a novel with serious ambitions that remains huge fun to read' Literary Review 'If you liked Smith's earlier fiction, you will know that she enjoys setting up a situation before chucking in a literary Molotov cocktail then describing what happens' Sunday Express 'Wonderful, word-playful, compelling' Jeanette Winterson 'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph 'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard
There but for the is the sparkling satirical novel by bestselling Ali Smith 'There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party . . .' As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear. There but for the was hailed as one of the best books of 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner and Nick Barley. 'Dazzlingly inventive' A.S. Byatt 'Whimsically devastating. Playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting' Guardian 'A real gem' Erica Wagner, The Times 'Eccentric, adventurous, intoxicating, dazzling. This is a novel with serious ambitions that remains huge fun to read' Literary Review 'If you liked Smith's earlier fiction, you will know that she enjoys setting up a situation before chucking in a literary Molotov cocktail then describing what happens' Sunday Express 'Wonderful, word-playful, compelling' Jeanette Winterson 'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph 'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard Ali Smith is the author of novels Girl Meets Boy, Like and the bestsellers The Accidental and Hotel World. She has published the short story collections The First Person and Other Stories, Free Love and Other Stories, Other Stories and Other Stories and The Whole Story and Other Stories. She has been twice-shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, twice nominated for the Orange Prize and won the Whitbread Novel of the Year in 2005.
The First Person and Other Stories is the fourth collection of short stories by Ali Smith. The First Person and Other Stories effortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones. Always intellectually playful, but also very moving and funny, Smith explores the ways and whys of storytelling. In one, a middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. In another, an innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, a third presents its narrator, 'Ali', as she drinks tea, phones a friend and muses on the relationship between the short story and - a nymph. Innovative, sophisticated and intelligent, the stories in The First Person and Other Stories are packed full of ideas, jokes, nuance and compassion. Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other. 'Smith's is a profoundly optimistic vision. These stories are frightening yet funny, and the sheer exuberance and playfulness of her language endows dark matters with a lightness of touch' New Statesman 'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton 'Terrific . . . hurrah for Ali Smith . . . The best short-story writers make it look as easy as making a cup of tea. Ali Smith is one of these . . . A bold and brilliant collection of stories by a writer unafraid to give it to us as it is' Times 'A glorious collection that celebrates and subverts the short story form' Independent
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