Glyph

Described as ‘the Virginia Woolf of our times’ (Observer), Ali Smith is one of our greatest living novelists. Don’t miss the chance to hear her discuss Glyph, a follow-up to the luminous Gliff (2024) — an anti-war work of a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world.

Glyph unravels a story hidden in the first novel, which is set in a near future rife with surveillance, where people can be labelled ‘unverifiable’. It follows siblings Briar and Rose as they attempt to survive in a world that strives to crush curiosity and meaning. The two books belong together but can also be read independently.

‘Few writers today can make a more compelling claim to singularity of innovation and sustained brilliance’ Times Literary Supplement

‘One of the most intelligent, inventive, downright impressive writers working anywhere in the world today’ The Scotsman

Glyph

It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost.
Is it imaginary? Is it real?

Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom.
What to do? She phones her sister.

In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness.

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women’s Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.