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THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

Discover Ali Smith's dazzling, once-in-a-generation series, the Seasonal Quartet, a tour-de-force quartet of novels about love, time, art, politics, and how we live right now

What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times?

Spring. The great connective.

With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door.

The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story?

Hope springs eternal.

LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2019

'Her best book yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and the present with a chorus of voices' Observer

'An astonishing accomplishment and a book for all seasons' Independent

'State-of-the-nation novels which understand that the nation is you, is me, is all of us' New Statesman

'Smith tells stories in a voice you can't help but listen to' The Times

© Ali Smith 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2025