RIP

Booker Prize-winner British author A.S. Byatt dies in residence at the age of 87

Byatt’s publisher, Chatto and Windus, said on Friday that the author died “peacefully at home surrounded by close family”

AP/PTI London Published 18.11.23, 

British writer A.S. Byatt

British author A.S. Byatt, whose books include the Booker Prize-winning novel Possession, has died at the age of 87.

Byatt’s publisher, Chatto and Windus, said on Friday that the author died “peacefully at home surrounded by close family”.

Byatt wrote two dozen books, starting with her first novel, The Shadow of the Sun in 1964

Possession, published in 1990, follows two modern-day academics investigating the lives of a pair of Victorian poets.

The novel, which skillfully layers a modern romance with mock-Victorian writing, was a huge best-seller and won the prestigious Booker Prize. It was adapted as a 2002 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart.

Her other books include four novels set in the 1950s and 60s Britain and known as the Frederica Quartet — The Virgin in the Garden, published in 1978, followed by Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman — and Booker Prize-shortlisted historical novel The Children’s Book, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2009.

Her volumes of short stories include The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, the title story of which won the 1995 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and inspired the 2022 film Three Thousand Years of Longing by Mad Max director George Miller.