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Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith's novels are like nothing else. Praised as the heir to Virginia Woolf, this lesbian author has been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize three times, most recently in 2014 for this highly original and lyrical novel which pushes the boundaries of literature!
How to be Both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the grief-stricken teenager of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance. Playing with the idea of ''Both'' and Duality - there is male and female; dead and alive; watched and watcher.
Please Note: This book has a dual structure consisting of two parts, both numbered One. The book can be read in either order, giving a different perspective whichever you choose.
Winner : Goldsmiths Award 2014, 2014 Costa Novel fo the Year Award
Shortlisted : Man Booker Prize 2014
Paperback, 384 Pages, Published 2015
Author : Ali Smith