The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories

Front Cover
Random House, 1997 - Fiction - 274 pages
The magnificent title story of this collection of fairy tales for adults describes the strange and uncanny relationship between its extravagantly intelligent heroine--a world renowned scholar of the art of story-telling--and the marvelous being that lives in a mysterious bottle, found in a dusty shop in an Istanbul bazaar. As A.S. Byatt renders this relationship with a powerful combination of erudition and passion, she makes the interaction of the natural and the supernatural seem not only convincing, but inevitable.
The companion stories in this collection each display different facets of Byatt's remarkable gift for enchantment. They range from fables of sexual obsession to allegories of political tragedy; they draw us into narratives that are as mesmerizing as dreams and as bracing as philosophical meditations; and they all us to inhabit an imaginative universe astonishing in the precision of its detail, its intellectual consistency, and its splendor.
"A dreamy treat.... It is not merely strange, it is wondrous."
--"Boston Globe
"Alternatingly erudite and earthy, direct and playful.... If Scheherazade ever needs a break, Byatt can step in, indefinitely."
--"Chicago Tribune
"Byatt's writing is crystalline and splendidly imaginative.... These [are] perfectly formed tales."
--"Washington Post Book World

"From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Contents

I
4
Godes Story
25
The Story of the Eldest Princess
39
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

A.S. Byatt, 1936 - A.S. Byatt was born on August 24, 1936 in Sheffield, England to John Frederick Drabble, a judge, and Kathleen Marie (Bloor) Drabble. She received a B.A. from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1957, did graduate study at Bryn Mawr College from 1957-58 and attended Somerville College, Oxford from 1958-59. In 1959, she married economist Ian Charles Rayner Byatt, with whom she had two children. They divorced in 1969 and she later married Peter John Duffy, and they also had two children. Byatt was a staff member in the extra-mural department at the University of London from 1962-71. From 1968-69, she was also a part-time lecturer in the liberal studies department of the Central School of Art and Design, London. She was a lecturer at University College from 1972-80 and then senior lecturer from 1981-83. She became a full-time writer in 1983. She has also been a member of the British Broadcasting Corp. Social Effects of Television Advisory Group from 1974-77, a member of Communications and Cultural Studies Board of the Council for National Academic Awards in 1978 and a member of Kingman Committee on the Teaching of English from 1987-88. Byatt received the English Speaking Union fellowship in 1957-58, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, the Silver Pen Award for "Still Life," and the Booker Prize for "Possession: A Romance" in 1990.

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