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Butter

Novellas, Stories and Fragments
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( 152 ratings, 24 reviews)
Brief Description
'A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers' - Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage 'Gayl Jones is a literary legend' - Yara Rodrigues Fowler, author of There Are More Things 'Her prose is intricate, mesmerizing, and endlessly inventive and subversive' - Deesha... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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A dazzling collection of short fiction from Pulitzer and National Book Award Finalist, Gayl Jones

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'A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers' - Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage 'Gayl Jones is a literary legend' - Yara Rodrigues Fowler, author of There Are More Things 'Her prose is intricate, mesmerizing, and endlessly inventive and subversive' - Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Gayl Jones's long career began with her blistering 1975 debut, Corregidora, which was edited by Toni Morrison. She is increasingly recognised as one of the great literary writers of the twentieth century. In this new collection of short fiction, Jones's unique talents are displayed in a range of settings and styles, from the hyper-realist to the mystical, in novella-length stories, intricate multi-part narratives, and in compelling fragments.

Endlessly inventive, challenging and surprising, Jones writes about our diverse world. Her characters are spies, photographers, baristas, cartoonists and revolutionaries; her settings are historical and contemporary, in Europe and the Americas. With sharp observation, wit, and poignancy, Jones explores complex identities and unorthodox longings.

'Jones's writing powerfully blends narrative and lyricism . . . Her imagination seems to thrive on outstripping one's expectations' - Margo Jefferson 'Every Jones publication is a major event, but this one is particularly precious . . . Jones's settings, which span time and geography, vary as much as the identities of her protagonists, which include women and men, Black, brown, and Indigenous people, artists and spies. The common threads are creativity and devastating insight' - Oprah Daily, 'The Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2023'

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780349016894

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 13 June 2024

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Virago Press Ltd

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 20.0mm

Width: 126.0mm

Height: 196.0mm

Weight: 167g

Pages: 192

About the Author

Gayl Jones was born in Kentucky in 1949. She attended Connecticut College and Brown University and has taught at Wellesley and the University of Michigan. Her books include Corregidora (1975), Eva's Man (1976), The Healing (1998), which was a National Book Award finalist, Palmares (2021), which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Birdcatcher (2022), which was also a National Book Award Finalist.

Also by Gayl Jones

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  • Corregidora
    No novel about any Black woman could ever be the same after this' TONI MORRISON I dreamed with my eyes open. All the Corregidora women with narrow waists and high cheekbones and wide hips. All the Corregidora women dancing. Blues singer Ursa is consumed by her hatred of Corregidora, the nineteenth-century slave master who fathered both her mother and grandmother....
    Paperback
    $2799
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  • The Unicorn Woman
    This extraordinary new novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army veteran Buddy Ray Guy as he embodies the fate of Black soldiers who return, not to glory, but to their Jim Crow communities. A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he's a...
    Paperback
    $3799
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  • The Unicorn Woman
    A literary giant TAYARI JONES A richly imaginative and moving new novel from the Pulitzer finalist and acclaimed author of Corregidora A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he's a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he's a man on a quest: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love. Returning...
    Paperback
    $2799
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  • Palmares
    A 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 'A once-in-a-lifetime work of literature, the kind that changes your understanding of the world' - Yara Rodriguez Fowler, Guardian 'Astonishingly rich in character and incident, filled with magic and mystery' - Sunday Times 'Intricate, mesmerizing and endlessly inventive and subversive' - Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of...
    Paperback
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