A.S. Byatt, página 2 de 4

A collection of short stories including subjects as diverse as memories, marriage, insects and ghosts. A.S. Byatt's other books include "Possession", winner of the 1990 Booker Prize.

Uno de los textos más apasionantes, lúcidos e inquietantes que nos ha brindado la literatura inglesa de las últimas décadas. Inmensa en más de un sentido, paradójicamente amada por críticos eruditos y por candidos lectores de romances y novelas policiacas, galardonada con el Booker, el mas prestigioso premio literario britanico, Posesion, cuenta su autora, tiene su remoto origen en las reflexiones que le inspiro una biografa americana de Coleridge que habia dedicado toda su vida al estudio del poeta. Era como un caso de posesion demoniaca, y me pregunte si era ella quien se habia apoderado de el, sabiendolo todo sobre su vida, o el de ella. En la novela, todo empieza con unas cartas robadas. Roland Mitchell, un oscuro graduado en literatura inglesa, descubre azarosamente entre los libros de Randolph Henry Ash, victoriano eminente, dos cartas inconclusas y nunca enviadas a una desconocida mujer. Roland se guarda las cartas y decide investigar la identidad de la misteriosa corresponsal y posible amante de Ash. Descubrira que esta es Christabel LaMotte, oscura, ambigua poeta de la epoca, reivindicada en la actualidad por feministas y lesbianas. Si realmente existio una relacion entre ambos, Roland ha hecho un descubrimiento que puede lanzarle a una brillante carrera academica y constituir un hito en el estudio de la poesia victoriana.Y acompañado por Maud Bailey, una mas que atractiva especialista en la obra de Christabel, seguiran un rastro de poemas, diarios y cartas y, gradualmente poseidos por aquellos que buscaban poseer, reconstruiran una historia de pasiones alli donde nunca se supo que las hubiera, historia que encontrara su peculiar espejo en el presente, un tiempo en el que se creia ya disipada toda pasion.

El libro reúne dos magníficas novelas cortas de ambientación victoriana. En la primera, un joven naturalista empieza a trabajar para un misterioso noble y acaba casándose con su hija; pero tal vez su destino conyugal sea el de los machos de ciertas especies de insectos que el ha estudiado... En la segunda, la esposa del desaparecido capitan que años atras llevo al naturalista al Amazonas organiza en su casa sesiones de espiritismo para comunicarse con los seres amados supuestamente perdidos.

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time. WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE

Uno de los textos más apasionantes, lúcidos e inquietantes que nos ha brindado la literatura inglesa de las últimas décadas. Un oscuro graduado en literatura inglesa descubre dos cartas inconclusas y nunca enviadas del eminente victoriano Randolph Henry Ash, cuya destinataria era una mujer que posiblemente fuese su amante. La mujer es Christabel LaMotte, oscura y ambigua poetisa de la epoca, reivindicada en la actualidad por feministas y lesbianas. Si realmente existio una relacion entre ambos, ha hecho un descubrimiento que puede catapultar su carrera academica. Ayudado por una seductora especialista en la obra de la poetisa, seguira el rastro a traves de diversos documentos y reconstruira una historia de pasiones que encontrara su peculiar espejo en el presente.

A new collection of stories from A. S. Byatt is always a winner, and this one takes an unexpected turn, bringing shivers as well as delights. Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two middle-aged women walk into a forest, as they did when they were girls, confronting their fears and memories and the strange thing they saw in their childhood - or thought they saw - so long ago. A distinguished obstetrician and young woman artist find they have sharply contrasting ideas about body parts, birth and death; an innocent member of an evening class harbours unexpected view on ''raw material''-The stories in this marvellous collection are by turns funny, spooky, sparkling and haunting. The Little Black Book of Stories holds its secrets, adding a dark quality to Byatt''s famous skill in mixing folk and fairy tale with everyday life.

Frederica Potter, 'doomed to be intelligent', plunges into Cambridge University life greedy for knowledge, sex and love. In Yorkshire her sister Stephanie has abandoned academe for the cosy frustration of the family. In this sequel to her much praised The Virgin in the Garden, and the second in a magnificent quartet, A. S. Byatt illuminates the inevitable conflicts between ambition and domesticity, confinement and self-fulfilment, while providing a subtle yet incisive observation of the intellectual and cultural life in England during the 1950s.

In this witty, Borges-like Novel, A. S. Byatt weaves a dazzling fictio n out of one man''s search for fact. Fed up with stultifying criticism , Phineas G. decides to study the messiness of ''real life''. Doing not hing by halves he sets out to write a biography of a great biographer. But a ''whole life'' is hard to find. How do we put the idea of a person together? Everywhere he looks he finds fragments and gaps: disconnected typescripts, bones and husks, boxes of marbles, collections of photographs. Trails run cold and mysteries are unresolved. Phineas feels he is hunting shadows. Like a shaman flying across the globe, his mind tracks the journeys of his subjects to the deserts of Africa and the maelstroms of the Arctic, where the shapes of myth meet the patterns of science. He meets others building wholes from bits and pieces: taxonomists, ecologists, even travel agents offering the trip of your dreams. In the process he also puzzles out his own future - but which woman will guide him out of the labyrinth? Tantalising, comic and rueful, The Biographer''s Tale is a modern delight, a colour-filled novel of detection and desire.

A. S. Byatt's Works Of Fiction Include "Possession", Winner Of The Booker Prize In 1990, The Sequence "The Virgin In The Garden, Still Life, And Babel Tower", And, Most Recently, "The Biographer's Tale". She Is Also The Author Of Several Important Critical Works And A Collection Of Essays, "Passions Of The Mind".