A luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. ByattWITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELLMirrors 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 travel from Ancient myth to an English sweet factory a
Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool a Turkish bazaar to a fairytale palace.
Driven by curiosity Byatt takes her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary and the gloss of
the fantastical to a place rich in ideas vivid in colour and wholly unforgettable.'A cabinet
of curiosities... Glitteringly beautiful. Byatt is a vivid colourist' Sunday Times'A cerebral
extravaganza bristling with ideas' Spectator 'These little stories by one of Britain's
foremost grandes dames of the writing world are a delightful surprise packing a much greater
punch than many full-length novels... They are moving thought-provoking witty and shocking
all at once' Sunday Telegraph
