_Ghosts don't exist._
_They don't. End of._
_Story, however._
_It is haunting._
_Everything tells it._
It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost.
Is it imaginary? Is it real?
Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom.
What to do? She phones her sister.
In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, _Glyph_ asks if we're attending to the history that's made us and to the history we're making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, _Glyph_ is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness.
This anti-war novel, Ali Smith's most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world.
A standalone novel, it's family to _Gliff_ (2024).
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, _The Accidental_, _Hotel World_, _How to Be Both_ and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.