
Ragnarok
The End of the Gods
A. S. Byatt(Author)
Canongate Canons (Publisher)
Published on 7. July 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-1-78211-718-6 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. Struggling to make sense of her new wartime life, she is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this mesmerising tale - inspired by the myth of Ragnarok - is a landmark piece of storytelling from one of the world's truly great writers.
Reviews / Votes
Lyrical and urgent * * The Times * * Brilliant, highly intelligent, fiercely personal . . . Gorgeous -- URSULA K. LE GUIN Byatt has made . . . an entire world, compressed but energetically alive in all its details. When we have artists like this, who needs gods? * * Observer * * Byatt's prose is majestic, the lush descriptive passages - jewelled one minute, gory the next - a pleasure to get lost in * * Sunday Telegraph * * Surely among the most beautiful and incisive pages Byatt has ever written * * Independent * * Byatt's writing, impassioned and liberated from the strictures of the novel, has never been so beautiful * * Telegraph * * Byatt's prose, compact and lyrical, treats the gods with dignity . . . Ragnarok is a clever, lucid, lovely book * * Guardian * * Byatt enters with gusto and an almost Ted Hughes-like relish for savagery into this primitive world of sorcery and trickery * * Sunday Times * * Byatt peels back the cover of the book that the girl reads and takes us deep inside it as she delights in reimagining the twilight of the gods and the destruction of the world . . . Like Wagner before her, she dares to dream how the world might end . . . this rewriting of the Ragnarok is a story for our time of overpopulation and anthropomorphic climate change, and of all time * * Financial Times * * Byatt's retelling of Ragnarok is permeated with the loving familiarity of long acquaintance -- JANE SHILLING * * Evening Standard * * Colour and sensation flood Byatt's writing . . . One of the most brilliant minds and speakers of our generation * * Independent * * Byatt paints beautiful and fantastic word-pictures, glittering verbal special effects * * Scotsman * * Energy and power drip from Byatt's writing . . . Glittering * * New Humanist * *More details
Series
Edition
Main - Canons Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Canongate Books
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 7 mm
Width: 195 mm
Thickness: 130 mm
Weight
180 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78211-718-6 (9781782117186)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Previous edition

Book
06/2012
Canongate Books
€31.15
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
A.S. Byatt is the author of fifteen works of fiction including the Booker Prize-winning Possession, The Biographer's Tale and the Man Booker-shortlisted The Children's Book. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A.S. Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999.