Babel Tower

First edition. Thick 8vo. Pp. [vi], 618. Black cloth-covered boards, titled in gilt to spine; navy endpapers.

Signed by Author to title page.

A cast of striking characters play out their personal dramas amidst the clashing politics, passionate ideals and stirring rhetoric of early 1960s England. Third in the author's quartet of novels set in different mid-century time frames, following Virgin in the Garden (1978), and Still Life (1985), the latter winning the 1986 PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. A Whistling Woman (2002), completed the tetralogy.

Recipient of the 1990 Booker prize for Possession. Listed amongst the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 by The Times in 2008. "[Byatt] has perfected the art of combining the trite plot lines of romance with lush intellectual and cultural analysis. Extravagantly clever, [she] entertains on a grand, even maddening scale, but her prose is both impeccable and sexy, her perspicacity astonishing." –Donna Seaman, Booklist