The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories

About this book

The magnificent title story of this collection of fairy tales for adults describes the strange and uncanny relationship between its extravagantly intelligent heroine--a world renowned scholar of the art of story-telling--and the marvelous being that lives in a mysterious bottle found in a dusty shop in an Istanbul bazaar. As A.S. Byatt renders this relationship with a powerful combination of erudition and passion she makes the interaction of the natural and the supernatural seem not only convincing but inevitable. The companion stories in this collection each display different facets of Byatts remarkable gift for enchantment. They range from fables of sexual obsession to allegories of political tragedy; they draw us into narratives that are as mesmerizing as dreams and as bracing as philosophical meditations; and they all us to inhabit an imaginative universe astonishing in the precision of its detail its intellectual consistency and its splendor. "A dreamy treat.... It is not merely strange it is wondrous." --Boston Globe "Alternatingly erudite and earthy direct and playful.... If Scheherazade ever needs a break Byatt can step in indefinitely." --Chicago Tribune "Byatts writing is crystalline and splendidly imaginative.... These are perfectly formed tales." --Washington Post Book World From the Trade Paperback edition.