Autumn by Ali Smith

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

WATERSTONES FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER 2017

A breathtakingly inventive new novel from the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author of How to be Both.

All across the country, there was misery and rejoicing. All across the country, what had happened whipped about by itself as if a live electric wire had snapped off a pylon in a storm and was whipping about in the air above the trees, the roofs, the traffic. All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they’d really lost. All across the country, people felt they’d really won.

Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That's what it felt like for Keats in 1819. How about Autumn 2016?

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.

Humour, grace, solace... A light-footed meditation on mortality, mutability and how to keep your head in troubled times - Guardian, Best Fiction 2016

[Ali Smith] is Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting - and I can't wait for her new book - Sebastian Barry, Observer

Ever-inventive... Autumn is the first serious Brexit novel...In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians. - Financial Times, Books of the Year

Experimental, thematically complex, associative, time-juggling, powered by a crazed and energetic curiosity - Sunday Times

Pure literary magic - Mail on Sunday

Puckish, yet elegant; angry, but comforting. Long may she remain that way - The Times

A wonderfully risky project... an ambitious, multi-layered creation...an energising and uplifting story - The Daily Telegraph