Bøger af Ali Smith

"From the Man Booker Prize shortlisted-author of the brilliant Seasonal Quartet series-a major new novel that promises to capture the present moment with Ali Smith's genius and bold spirit. "A story is never an answer. A story is always a question." Here we are in extraordinary times. Is this history? What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other? What have we lost? What stays with us? What does it take to unlock our future? Following her astonishing Seasonal Quartet, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its timeless and contemporary, legendary and unpindownable, spellbinding and shapeshifting forms. Companion Piece stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself. But like Smith's groundbreaking series, this new novel boldly captures the spirit of the times. 'Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting.'"--

"Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd., a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., London, in 2017"--Copyright page.

BITCH. SCOLD. HARRIDAN.For centuries past, and all across the worldDRAGON. TIGRESS. SHE-DEVIL.There are words for a certain kind of womanFURY. HARPY. SPITFIRE.Words that raise our hackles, fire up our bloodHUSSY. SIREN. VIXEN.Words that tell a storyIn this blazing cauldron of a book, the boldest writers of our day take up these words and take up their pen, celebrating fifty years of Virago.

Februar 2020. Voldsomme brande hærger Australien, og man har opdaget en mystisk virus i Kina. I Brighton i Sydengland insisterer den sekstenårige Sacha på, at kloden har problemer. Hendes kværulerende og kyniske lillebror, Robert, er problemer. Moren og faren har problemer, og faren er flyttet sammen med sin unge kæreste i nabohuset.Imens er verden ved at bryde sammen – og det endelige sammenbrud er ikke engang begyndt.Sommer er en roman om store, gennemgribende forandringer. Ali Smith skriver knivskarpt og håbefuldt om en mørk tid, og om mennesker som er i familie, men som ikke kender hinanden. Det er i hvert fald, det de tror. Men hvad er egentlig familie? Og hvad er det de alligevel har til fælles?Sommer er fjerde og sidste bog i forfatterens årstidskvartet. En poetisk, politisk fortælling om samfundet lige nu.

Full transcript of Ali Smith's Muriel Spark lecture, given in November 2017.

A richly inventive new collection of stories from the MAN BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED and WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet'Smith is dazzling in her daring. Sheer inventive power' Observer'In Ali Smith we have a writer whose dazzling sophistication will surely be celebrated, studied and argues over hundreds of years after we're gone' ScotsmanWhy are books so powerful? What do the books we read make of us? And what does the vanishing of public libraries say about us?These stories 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 raises her voice in defence of our public libraries, celebrating their essential place in our culture and history.

Being short, you might think the story's structure would yield an answer to this question more readily than, say, the novel. But for as long as the short story has been around, arguments have raged as to what it should and shouldn't be made up of, what it should and shouldn't do. Here, 15 leading contemporary practitioners offer structural appreciations of past masters of the form as well as their own perspectives on what the short story does so well. The best short stories don't have closure, argues one contributor, 'because life doesn't have closure'; 'plot must be written with the denouement constantly in view,' quotes another. Covering a century of writing that arguably saw all the major short forms emerge, from Hawthorne's 'Twice Told Tales' to Kafka's modernist nightmares, these essays offer new and unique inroads into classic texts, both for the literature student and aspiring writer.

Hailed among the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner...A sparkling satire from the MAN BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED and WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet'Playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting' Guardian'Adventurous, intoxicating, dazzling. This is a novel with serious ambitions that remains huge fun to read' Literary Review'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph'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 first appear...

A form-bending and endlessly inventive collection of short stories - from the MAN BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED and WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet'A glorious collection that celebrates and subverts the short story form' Independent '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' The TimesA middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. An innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, we see a 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 First Person and Other Stories effortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones in equal measure. One-of-a-kind Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other.

* A definitive collection of 101 short pieces from 1900 to 2000 this is an invaluable volume of women's writing this century

From the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted, Baileys Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet'Brilliant and engaging, frequently hilarious. . . Smith makes one look at the world afresh' Sunday Telegraph 'A beguiling page-turner... To read The Accidental is to be excited from first to last' Independent'Joyous' The TimesThe Accidental pans in on the Norfolk holiday home of the Smart family one hot summer. There a beguiling stranger called Amber appears at the door bearing all sorts of unexpected gifts, trampling over family boundaries and sending each of the Smarts scurrying from the dark into the light.A novel about the ways that seemingly chance encounters irrevocably transform our understanding of ourselves, The Accidental explores the nature of truth, the role of fate and the power of storytelling.

A vitally alive and ever-surprising collection of stories from the MAN BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED and WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet'Bold and sensitive. Smith's prose is a joy' Independent'Captures quiet epiphanies of the extraordinary in the mundane' Sunday Times'These stories fizz with life' The Times Literary Supplement Individually lucid and luminous, these tales resonate subtly together. In examining the distances and connections between ourselves and others, expertly inching us closer to the bone, Ali Smith's storytelling has never seemed so necessary, so moving or so joyous.

A wildly inventive collection of fiction from the MAN BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED and BAILEYS PRIZE-WINNING author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet'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

From the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet Artful is a revelation; a new kind of book altogether . . . it could have only been written by Ali Smith. An intimate study of grief that makes you glad to be alive Jackie Kay Playful and audacious Independent Powerful and moving London Review of Books Magical... Blending of criticism and fiction, Artful belongs in a genre of its own . . . Joyful for anyone interested in the art of writing, and living, well Anita Sethi, New Statesman Based on four electrifying lectures given by the author at Oxford University, and exploring the explosive connections between art, story, memory and grief - Artful is a tidal wave of ideas to blast away the cobwebs and change how you see the world Narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, Artful slips slyly between fiction and essay, guiding the reader thrillingly through a sequence of ideas on art and literature. With Smiths trademark humour, inventiveness, poignancy and critical insight, this is unique experiment in form, style, life, love, death, immortality and what art can mean.

A teenage girl finds unexpected sexual freedom on a trip to Amsterdam. A woman trapped at a dinner party comes up against an ugly obsession. The stories in Free Love are about desire, memory, sexual ambiguity and the imagination. In the harsh light of dislocation, the people in them still find connections, words blowing in the street, love in unexpected places. Ali Smith shows how things come together and how they break apart. She disconcerts and affirms with the lightest touch, to make us love and live differently.

There's Amy and there's Ash. There's ice and there's fire. There's England and there's Scotland. Ali Smith evokes the twin spirits of time and place in an extraordinarily powerful first novel, which teases out the connections between people, the attractions, the ghostly repercussions. By turns funny, haunting and disconcertingly moving, LIKE soars across hidden borders between cultures, countries, families, friends and lovers. Subtle and complex, it confounds expectations about fiction and truths. 'Ingenious, shimmering fiction, written with a poetic grace that subtly illuminates the tensions between hope and desire, between past and present' Scotland on Sunday