Medusa’s Ankles

A luminous single-volume selection of short stories from the Booker prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt.

Medusa’s Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Mirrors 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.

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.

With an introduction by David Mitchell.

'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