Glyph by Smith, Ali

Description

Author: Smith, AliModern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)Published on 29 January 2026 by Penguin Books Ltd (Hamish Hamilton Ltd) in the United Kingdom.Hardback | 288 pages143 x 224 x 27 | 366g
Ghosts dont exist. They dont. End of. Story, however. It is haunting. Everything tells it. It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. Is it imaginary? Is it real?Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. What to do? She phones her sister.In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if were attending to the history thats made us and to the history were making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness. This anti-war novel, Ali Smiths most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world. A standalone novel, its family to Gliff (2024).