Babel Tower
Authors: A.S. Byatt
A. S. BYATT’
s
BABEL TOWER
“In this major novel Byatt establishes herself as one of the two or three most important contemporary British writers.”
—
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Byatt displays a dazzling range of narrative interests and inventiveness.”
—
Elle
“Byatt is in top form here.… [She] uses her skills to masterly effect, illuminating a period of our history while employing the many facets of the English language to convey the struggles, anxieties and triumphs of a memorable cast of characters.”
—
Denver Post
“[A] dazzling epic.… Like a marvelous tapestry, Byatt has woven together the meaningful dialogues of an era, with all their flaws and beauty.”
—
Entertainment Weekly
“Byatt writes beautifully, and passages of this novel come to brilliant life.”
—
Time
“
Babel Tower
is a great, big sweep of a story, broad yet densely compacted.”
—
Miami Herald
“Taken together with the rest of Ms. Byatt’s output, it puts literary England on the map again.”
—
Dallas Morning News
“
Babel Tower
is fat, compelling, full of narrative invention, multivalent in its structure, and is a luscious and fascinating book.”
—
Houston Chronicle
“Extraordinarily ambitious, even admirable.… Byatt’s … prodigious imagination and literary skills will keep the … reader happily engaged.”
—
Philadelphia Inquirer
“
Babel Tower
is … brilliant and rich, employing such a virtuoso range of narrative styles and character voices.”
—
San Jose Mercury News
“This is a book only Byatt could write: the humor mingled with a dark, suspenseful foreboding; the deconstruction of great novels intertwined with romance and jealousy. And happily, it’s long enough that even the most compulsive reader won’t finish it in a day.”
—
Charlotte Observer
“[Byatt is] a riveting storyteller who grants her own wish, making her readers care about the people in her book. The many stories twine together with ingenious thoroughness.”
—
Newsday
“Byatt’s writing is extravagant and sensual, and even her most outrageous characters seem entirely real. A feast of a book.”
—
Town & Country
“It is all rich and often exhilarating. Byatt writes with a fierce intelligence and a sharply observant eye. Her characters are described with rare acuity and precision.”
—
Orlando Sentinel
“
Babel Tower
’s … ability to sustain narrative bite while refusing to cave in to the nastiness it probes pushes Byatt to the forefront of active English language novelists. Here is a book for those willing to be angered, jolted and, possibly, enriched.”
—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“For intelligence and observation, Byatt has few peers.”
—
Hartford Courant
BABEL TOWER
A. S. Byatt is the author of
Possession
, winner of the Booker Prize and a national bestseller. Her two novels that lead up to
Babel Tower
, tracing the fortunes of Frederica and her family through the 1950s, are
The Virgin in the Garden
and
Still Life
, and her other fiction includes
The Shadow of the Sun, The Game, Angels & Insects
, and two collections of shorter works,
Sugar and Other Stories
and
The Matisse Stories
. She has also published three volumes of critical work, of which
Passions of the Mind
is the most recent. She has taught English and American literature at University College, London, and is a distinguished critic and reviewer. She lives in London.
A. S. BYATT
FICTION
Babel Tower
The Matisse Stories
The Shadow of the Sun
The Game
The Virgin in the Garden
Still Life
Sugar and Other Stories
Possession
Angels & Insects
CRITICISM
Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch
Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge
Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JULY 1997
Copyright © 1996 by A. S. Byatt
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1996. Published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Limited, a division of Random House UK, London, in 1996.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Harcourt Brace & Company and Faber and Faber Limited: Excerpt from “Burnt Norton” in
Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1943 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Rights throughout the world excluding the United States are controlled by Faber and Faber Limited. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company and Faber and Faber Limited. Houghton Mifflin Company and HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.: Excerpt from
The Hobbit
by J. R. R. Tolkien. Copyright © 1966 by J. R. R. Tolkien. Rights outside the United States are controlled by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., London. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company and HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Alfred A. Knopf. Inc.: Three lines from “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” from
Collected Poems
by Wallace Stevens. Copyright © 1923 and renewed 1951 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
The Observer
: Article by Maurice Richardson from the May 8, 1966, issue of
The Observer
. Copyright © 1966 by The Observer. Reprinted by permission. Random House, Inc.: Eight lines from “Death’s Echo” and twenty lines from “Circe,” from
W. H. Auden: Collected Poems
by W. H. Auden. “Death’s Echo” copyright © 1936 by W. H. Auden. “Circe” copyright © 1969 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Ronin Publishing: Copyright 1990P: Timothy Leary, from
Politics of Ecstasy
by Timothy Leary, Ph. D. Permission to reprint herein given by Ronin Publishing, Inc., Berkeley, CA. University Press of New England: Excerpt from
Life Against Death
by Norman O. Brown. Copyright © 1959 by Wesleyan University. Reprinted by permission of University Press of New England.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Random House edition as follows:
Byatt, A. S. (Antonia Susan)
Babel Tower / A. S. Byatt—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Married women—England—London—Fiction. 2. Trials (Obscenity)—England—Fiction. 3. Family violence—England—Fiction. 4. Young women—England—Fiction. 5. Divorce—England—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6052.Y2B33 1996b
823’.914—dc20 95-53210
eISBN: 978-0-307-81958-1
Random House Web address:
http://www.randomhouse.com/
v3.1
For David Royle
