Glyph follows Ali Smith's 2024 novel Gliff and tells a story hidden in the first novel. Gliff is set in a near future rife with surveillance, where people can be labelled 'unverifiable' by the state. It follows siblings Briar and Rose as they attempt to survive in a world that strives to crush curiosity and meaning. 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. Format: Oversized paperbackPublished: UK, 2026Publisher: Penguin Books LtdPages: 266Language: EnglishISBN 10: 0241665612ISBN 13: 9780241665619
