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  • Published: 30 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781784878825
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

The Gap of Time

The Winter's Tale, Retold




SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is revolutionised by the iconic Jeanette Winterson in her page-turning, heart-breaking story of a baby girl banished from home.

A baby girl is abandoned, banished from London to the storm-ravaged American city of New Bohemia. Her father has been driven mad by jealousy, her mother to exile by grief. Seventeen years later, Perdita doesn't know a lot about who she is or where she's come from – but she's about to find out.

Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale vibrates with echoes of Shakespeare's original and tells a story of hearts broken and hearts healed, a story of revenge and forgiveness, a story that shows that whatever is lost shall be found.

‘A shining delight of a novel’
New York Times

'Clever and beautiful...it soars'
Financial Times

SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before: nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

  • Published: 30 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781784878825
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

About the author

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn’t work out. Discovering early the power of books she left home at 16 to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at 25. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. 27 years later she re-visited that material in the bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London. She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.

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