Gliff

Author Ali Smith
Narrator Eliot Sumner
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 31 October 2024
Run Time 4 hours and 57 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Politics, Science fiction, Science fiction: near-future, Speculative fiction.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

O brave new world, that has such people in't.

Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.

What does it mean?

It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world.

What would that actually be like?

In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?

And what’s a horse got to do with any of this?

Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it's a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.

©2025 Ali Smith (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Here is a voice that moves with lightness and precision, where bravery and goodness triumph in spirit over jeopardy and fear . . . Smith is good at fable-ising, and at taking a young perspective in order to question afresh systems and inherited knowledge . . . Smithu2019s fiction teaches with vitality that there is no such thing as a futile question

Financial Times

Ali Smithu2019s miraculous Gliff is at once a pitch-black take on the authoritarian future and a tender, hilarious and ultimately uplifting portrait of two young siblings as they battle to escape it. Full of jokes and wordplay, kindness and connection . . . A ray of hope after a year like this one

The Irish Times, 'Books of the year'

A vivid, alluringly chatty novelist capable of deft and unforeseeable sidesteps . . . Smithu2019s new novel is a charm . . . Smith excels at the creation of a lost, curious, intelligent mind adrift in a world of surprises and the unforeseen . . . Smith has created a gloriously strange world

Daily Telegraph

Gliff is one of Smithu2019s most propulsive stories u2013 a dark adventure with high stakes, which, despite its bleak subject matter, is still a sparklingly crisp read . . . Typically tantalising stuff from one of our most playful writers . . . [Smith] is as frisky as ever, peppering with puns, and making hay with homonyms imbues her characters with this linguistic exuberance . . . A new Ali Smith book is always an event

Unendingly playful [and] mind-expanding . . . Gliff draws battle lines between art, language and Big Tech . . . The meaning and meaningless of our words is an overarching theme of Smithu2019s oeuvre . . . Smith does not tire of the wonder of language [and] has mastered a style that is both disconcerting and utterly humane

New Statesman

Ali Smith stakes her claim amongst the most inventive living British writers . . . Gliff is another fizzing firework display, with conceptual shenanigans and running prose put in the service of hot-button social issues . . . a freewheeling narrative that mixes jeopardy-laden drama with restless digression on everything from agrochemicals to AI

Daily Mail

A study, a confrontation, a rejoinder, a folksong: Ali Smith's marvellous Gliff considers the complexities of our present moment and the thorny, bridling potential of possible futures with wit, care and craft. A masterpiece of storytelling about storytelling, exploring the delighting, dangerous power of language and connectivity

The Spectator, 'Books of the Year'

As usual with Smith, the gorgeous prose will swirl in your head. Gliff is challenging and enigmatic

Independent

Part allegory, part dystopian fiction, altogether thrilling . . . one of the most affecting stories about resistance to blind power I have read . . . quite simply the best book Iu2019ve read this year

Irish Times

If Smithu2019s recent books were a handbook for 21st-century life, Gliff is a warning as to what will happen if we ignore their lessons

Observer

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