Ali Smith

A breathtakingly inventive new novel from the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author of How to be both Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy and the colour-hit of Pop Art - via a bit of very contemporary skulduggery and skull-diggery - Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture, and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means. Autumn is the first installment in Ali Smith's novel quartet Seasonal: four standalone books, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are), exploring what time is, how we experience it, and the recurring markers in the shapes our lives take and in our ways with narrative. 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.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER'In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians' Financial Times'Undoubtedly Smith at her best. Puckish, yet elegant; angry, but comforting' The Times 'A beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities... The first post-Brexit novel' GuardianA breathtakingly inventive new novel from the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author of How to be both Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer.Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever . . .'Terrific, extraordinary, playful... There is an awful lot to lift the soul' Daily Mail'Bold and brilliant' Observer

Winter? Bleak. Earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. But winter makes things visible. And Christmas is a time for family reunions, unexpected guests and evergreen truths. It's December in Cornwall and Art's mother is seeing things. Art has problems too. His girlfriend has left so he's paying Lux, a young immigrant he found on the street, to impersonate her - but Lux has no intention of sticking to the script. And Iris, Art's prodigal aunt, septuagenarian CND-er and black sheep of the family, is about to arrive with a car full of food and a throat full of protest songs. Four people, strangers and family, in a fifteen-bedroom house for Christmas - will there be enough room for everyone? Winter casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, art, love and memory, protest and survival.

Finalistka prestížnej Man Bookerovej ceny sa prvýkrát predstaví v slovenčine. Jeseň je prvý zo štyroch románov s názvami podľa ročných období. V knihe sa prelínajú príbehy umierajúceho 101- ročného starca Daniela Glucka a mladej ženy Elisabeth Demand. Postupne, cez viaceré spomienky zisťujeme, čo tieto dve postavy znamenali a čo znamenajú jeden pre druhého. Ich priateľstvo sa začalo náhodou, boli susedmi, no postupne sa zbližovali najmä cez umenie a to, že si jeden na druhého našli čas. Román je tiež označovaný ako prvý skutočne pobrexitový, keďže reflektuje súčasné dianie vo Veľkej Británii.

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 'Her best book yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and the present with a chorus of voices' Observer 'A story of our times... Savour it, because there is just one instalment left' Evening Standard 'Spring weaves a story around the most pressing issues of our time... Smith tells stories in a voice you can't help but listen to' The Times From the bestselling author of Autumn and Winter, as well as the Baileys Prize-winning How to be both, comes the next installment in the remarkable, once-in-a-generation masterpiece, the Seasonal Quartet What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door. The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal. Praise for the Seasonal Quartet: 'Transcendental writing about art, death, political lies, and all the dimensions of love. It's a case not so much of reading between the lines as of being blinded by the light between the lines - in a good way' Deborah Levy on Autumn 'The novel of the year is obviously Autumn, which managed the miracle of making at least a kind of sense out of post-Brexit Britain' Olivia Laing, Observer on Autumn 'Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she's on fire these days... Combining brainy playfulness with depth, topicality with timelessness, and complexity with accessibility while delivering an impassioned defence of human decency and art' NPR on Winter 'Rank[s] among the most original, consoling and inspiring of the artistic responses to 'this mad and bitter mess' of the present' Financial Times on Winter 'A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised... Smith is engaged in an extended process of mythologizing the present states of Britain... Luminously beautiful' Observer on Winter

SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER 1 BESTSELLERFrom the bestselling author of Autumn and Winter, as well as the Baileys Prize-winning How to be both, comes the next installment in the remarkable, once-in-a-generation masterpiece, the Seasonal Quartet'Luminous, generous, hope-filled . . .The third book in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet is her best yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and present with a chorus of voices... [Ali Smith] is lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now' - ObserverWhat unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times?Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door. The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story?Hope springs eternal.

The unmissable finale to Ali Smith's dazzling literary tour de force: the Seasonal quartet concludes in 2020 with Summer In the present, Sacha knows the world's in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble.Meanwhile the world's in meltdown - and the real meltdown hasn't even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they're living on borrowed time. This is a story about people on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they've got nothing in common have in common? Summer.

Discover the unforgettable finale to Ali Smith's dazzling literary tour-de-force In the present, Sacha knows the world's in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile the world's in meltdown - and the real meltdown hasn't even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they're living on borrowed time. This is a story about people on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they've got nothing in common have in common? Summer. 'Smith's seasonal quartet of novels is a bold and brilliant experiment' Independent 'The novel's hopeful message about the healing power of friendship ensures the quartet ends on a feel-good note' Sunday Times

'My mother began me one evening in 1968 on a table in the cafe of the town's only cinema . . .' One hot summer a stranger arrives at the Norfolk holiday home of the Smart family. Intriguing, beguiling, arresting, Amber brings love, joy, pain and not a little upheaval, throwing the carefully ordered world of the Smarts into the air. They will be forever changed by Amber but how will they know whether it is for the bad, the good or something else entirely? 'Joyous ... writing as rapture, as giddy delight' The Times 'Funny, sexy, poignant, bewitching' Observer