Description

O brave new world, that has such people in’t.

Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.

What does it mean?

It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world.

What would that actually be like?

In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?

And what’s a horse got to do with any of this?

Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it’s a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.

Publisher Review

Here is a voice that moves with lightness and precision, where bravery and goodness triumph in spirit over jeopardy and fear . . . Smith is good at fable-ising, and at taking a young perspective in order to question afresh systems and inherited knowledge . . . Smith's fiction teaches with vitality that there is no such thing as a futile question * Financial Times * Ali Smith's miraculous Gliff is at once a pitch-black take on the authoritarian future and a tender, hilarious and ultimately uplifting portrait of two young siblings as they battle to escape it. Full of jokes and wordplay, kindness and connection . . . A ray of hope after a year like this one -- Paul Murray * The Irish Times, 'Books of the year' * A vivid, alluringly chatty novelist capable of deft and unforeseeable sidesteps . . . Smith's new novel is a charm . . . Smith excels at the creation of a lost, curious, intelligent mind adrift in a world of surprises and the unforeseen . . . Smith has created a gloriously strange world * Daily Telegraph * Gliff is one of Smith's most propulsive stories - a dark adventure with high stakes, which, despite its bleak subject matter, is still a sparklingly crisp read . . . Typically tantalising stuff from one of our most playful writers . . . [Smith] is as frisky as ever, peppering with puns, and making hay with homonyms imbues her characters with this linguistic exuberance . . . A new Ali Smith book is always an event -- Holly Williams * i * Unendingly playful [and] mind-expanding . . . Gliff draws battle lines between art, language and Big Tech . . . The meaning and meaningless of our words is an overarching theme of Smith's oeuvre . . . Smith does not tire of the wonder of language [and] has mastered a style that is both disconcerting and utterly humane * New Statesman * Ali Smith stakes her claim amongst the most inventive living British writers . . . Gliff is another fizzing firework display, with conceptual shenanigans and running prose put in the service of hot-button social issues . . . a freewheeling narrative that mixes jeopardy-laden drama with restless digression on everything from agrochemicals to AI * Daily Mail * A study, a confrontation, a rejoinder, a folksong: Ali Smith's marvellous Gliff considers the complexities of our present moment and the thorny, bridling potential of possible futures with wit, care and craft. A masterpiece of storytelling about storytelling, exploring the delighting, dangerous power of language and connectivity * The Spectator, 'Books of the Year' * As usual with Smith, the gorgeous prose will swirl in your head. Gliff is challenging and enigmatic -- Martin Chilton * Independent * Part allegory, part dystopian fiction, altogether thrilling . . . one of the most affecting stories about resistance to blind power I have read . . . quite simply the best book I've read this year * Irish Times * If Smith's recent books were a handbook for 21st-century life, Gliff is a warning as to what will happen if we ignore their lessons * Observer *