After Sappho: A Novel [Paperback]

A A brilliant debut . . . In passages often recalling the sensuous prose of Ali Smith,? [ Words can be an incantation; the right verse can summon desire and a depth of feeling that can seem at odds with the quiet act of reading. Heart rates can rise as readers quietly turn the page, changing even as they remain still. A good phrase can unleash something inside a person; it can unearth and provoke. In Selby Wynn Schwartzs novel 'After Sappho', long-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize in fiction, the verses of the sixth-century BCE Greek poet do all this and so much more.... Selby Wynn Schwartz writes beautiful prose, with a keen eye toward the playfulness of grammar and the joy of language. This is a book to be consumed slowly, to be savored like a glorious sunset even as it screams the inevitability of night. 'After Sappho' is an incantation against the darkness and a call to the light, however fragmented it may be. Long-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize, this time-leaping novel connects a pantheon of queer literary titans  Sappho! Oscar Wilde! Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West!  with one muse. This book reads as if its skipping: full of movement, lightness, and whimsical defiance. Desire, art and politics lead the dance in This one-of-a-kind book channels a spirit of righteous anger as well as lyrical freedom and joy. She is excellent at threading her stories together, collecting people, dispersing them across the world, drawing lovers and friends under one roof to explore an alternative, sororal history. Schwartzs voice is one of dry wit and cocked eyebrow, mocking the man-made record. In one particularly fantastic sequence, she sends up Noel Pemberton Billing, the British Member of Parliament famous for fabricating 'The Black Book', which he never bothered to write, supposedly containing the name of every lesbian in Britain. A highly original, practically uncategorisable novel... Sarah Bernhardt, Virginia Woolf, the Italian writer and lesbian Lina Pol3#