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  • Published: 5 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241974582
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

Public library and other stories




A book by one of the UK's favourite writers about why books mean the world to us

Why are books so very powerful?
What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us?
What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us?

The stories in Ali Smith's new collection 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.

  • Published: 5 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241974582
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

About the author

Ali Smith

Ali Smith is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, Public library and other stories and Autumn. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.

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Praise for Public library and other stories

Smith is dazzling in her daring. Sheer inventive power

Observer

Ali Smith is a one-off. Her imagination and originality make her one of the most exciting novelists of her generation

Daily Express

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

Scotsman

Smith's world is incredibly generous - it's a place where all sorts of stories and human connections are possible

Metro

Publisher's description. A story collection from the peerless, multi-award-winning Ali Smith. What do we do with books - and what do they do with us? How do books shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once? And how might they remind us to pay attention to the world we make?

Penguin