Jesen

Memories spill over into a view of an uncertain future, fiction intertwines with the real life of Pauline Boty, a forgotten and rediscovered pioneer of pop art. In the UK after the Brexit referendum, anxiety reigns. And everything – the novel, life, history – is ruled by time: a dialogue between irreversible transience and the eternal cycle of maturation, aging, death and renewal, the only and paradoxical constant of the world we live in. Poetic and meditative, topical and timeless, gently satirical and linguistically bravura, the first part of Ali Smith’s tetralogy The Seasons is the beginning of a quiet revolution in the understanding of the novel form. Autumn was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. It was included among the books of the year by the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Financial Times, Guardian and Kirkus Reviews.