How to be both: A novel [Paperback]

MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST
WINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE 2014 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD 
WINNER OF THE SALTIRE LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

A Best Book of the Year: NPR,Financial Times

Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else.Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take,How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. It’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

“Playfully brilliant. . . . Delightful. . . . Incredibly touching.” —The Washington Post

“Magnificent. . . . Brilliant and cheeky.”—The Boston Globe 

“[A] sly and shimmering double helix of a novel.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Joyful. . . . Moving. . . .  Encompasses wonderful mothers, unconventional love and friendship, time, mortality, gender, the consolations of art and so much else.”—NPR

“A mystery to be marveled at. . . . Smith is endlessly artful, creating a work that feels infinite in its scope and intimate at the same time.” —The Atlantic

“Ali Smith is a genius. . . . [How to be both] cements Smith’s reputation as one of the finest and most innovative of our contemporary writers. By some divine alchemy, she is both funny and moving; she combines intellectual rigor with whimsy.” &mdaslÃ&