The Biographer's Tale

First US edition. 8vo. Pp. [x], 305, [5]. Quarter-bound brown cloth over beige paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Deckled fore-edges. Jacket design by Gabriele Wilson.

A 2001 New York Times Notable Book. Fed up with stultifying criticism, Phineas G. Nanson – a young graduate student – decides to study the messiness of "real life" by writing a biography of a great biographer. A Borges-like novel, in which A.S. Byatt weaves fiction out of one man's search for fact. "An impressive achievement, a literary mosaic at once exotic, academic, esoteric, engaging, and disconcerting... A feast for the brain." –The Denver Post