Medusa's ankles : selected stories

Author

A S Byatt

Call Number

• FICTION BYAT (CEN)

Edition

First United States edition.

Publication Information

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

Physical Description

xvii, 445 pages ; 25 cm

Summary

"A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, drawn from her entire career. Mirrors shatter at the hairdressers when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess, honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real. Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary--even beyond the gloss of the fantastical--to a place rich and strange and wholly unforgettable"--

Contents

• July ghost
• Sugar
• Precipice-encurled
• Racine and the tablecloth
• Medusa's ankles
• Chinese lobster
• Dragons' breath
• Djinn in the nightingale's eye
• Lamia in the Cévennes
• Christ in the house of Martha and Mary
• Cold
• Heavenly bodies
• Raw material
• stone woman
• narrow jet
• Dolls' eyes
• lucid dreamer
• Sea story