Glyph: A Novel - Hardcover

Smith, Ali

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593701585 ISBN 13: 9780593701584

Publisher: Pantheon, 2026

Synopsis

From a literary master, a novel of ghosts and history and family legacy, of the unexpected acts of care that shine light into our dark.

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 chiarascuro 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.

About this title

About the Author

ALI SMITH is the author of many works of fiction, including, most recently, Companion Piece, the "Seasonal Quartet," Public library and other stories, and How to be both, which won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Costa Novel Award. Her work has four times been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Most recently, she won the George Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for Summer. Born in Inverness, Scotland, she lives in Cambridge, England.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593701585
• ISBN 13: 9780593701584
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288