Editions

How to be Both

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141025209

  • Length: 384  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 23mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 266g

  • RRP: £8.99

How to be Both

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2014

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014

WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD

WINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2014

NOMINATED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE 2015

'Brims with palpable joy' Daily Telegraph

'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton

'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.

Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith's novels are like nothing else.

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141025209

  • Length: 384  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 23mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 266g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • Dizzyingly good and so clever that it makes you want to dance

    New Statesman

  • A delight. A masterpiece. Magical.

    Sunday Times

  • I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul

    Evening Standard

  • Exciting, full of joy and wryly funny... [Ali Smith is] one of the most inventive writers alive

    Emerald Street

  • A remarkably easy and immensely enjoyable read... Ali Smith is a one-off. Her imagination and originality make her one of the most exciting novelists of her generation. Both George and Francesco touch the heart and linger in the mind long after the final page.

    Daily Express

  • Smith is the brightest spark in a recent explosion of female novelists taking dizzying risks with form and voice . . . most contemporary male authors feel Jurassic by comparison.

    Metro

  • Rich, funny and moving. Smith's writing really catches fire

    Financial Times

  • Dazzling

    Independent

  • This warm, funny book deserves to be read at least one-and-a-half times

    Honor Clerk, Spectator

  • Radical, dazzling . . . Those writers making doomy predictions about the death of the novel should read Smith's re-imagined novel/s, and take note of the life it contains

    Independent

More from this Author

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About the Author

Ali Smith

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.

Ali Smith

Read more

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Recommendations

Where to start with Ali Smith

Ali Smith’s literary career has been one of impressive breadth and versatility. Whether you've already read some of her writing or you're new to her work, this is our essential guide on which of her books to pick up next.
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Features

What we learned about writing from Ali Smith’s Penguin podcast

The How to be Both author tells Nihal Arthanayake about her process in the latest episode. Here are some tips to take away.
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Editor's picks: the best books to transport you

A selection of reads that will take you to different lands and time periods, all from the comfort of your favourite reading spot.

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