The Children's Book

A.S. Byatt’s vivid and deeply affecting historical fiction is the story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day.

In the golden summers of Edwardian times, the Wellwood children play in a story-book world in their rambling house near Romney Marsh. But their lives, and those of their cousins and friends - are already inscribed with mystery. As the sons rebel against their parents and the girls dream of independent futures, they are unaware that in the darkness ahead they will unintentionally be betrayed by the adults who love them. This is The Children's Book.

"While Byatt’s engagement with the period’s over­lapping circles of artists and reformers is serious and deep, so much is stuffed into “The Children’s Book” that it can be hard to see the magic forest for all the historical lumber — let alone the light at the end of the narrative tunnel."  -  The New York Times

"Bristling with life and invention, it is a seductive work by an extraordinarily gifted writer…That Byatt marries this novel of ideas with such compelling characters testifies to her remarkable spinning energy."  -  Keith Donohue, The Washington Post

A.S. Byatt won the Booker Prize in 1990 with Possession and was shortlisted in 2009 with The Children’s Book. Writing, she says, ‘is simply the most important thing in my life’.  She published her first novel in 1964 and, apart from an interlude as an academic, has been writing them - and short stories, essays and critical appreciations - ever since. Although she is known for her high intellectualism, on winning the Booker Prize in 1990, she famously declared - with perhaps a hint of a josh - that she would spend the winnings on a swimming pool for her house in France.