Mirrors shatter at the hairdressers when a client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the body of a princess honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real. MEDUSA'S ANKLES celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing.

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children's Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her 'inspiring contribution to life writing' and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.