The Biographer's Tale

Phineas G. sets out to write a biography of a great biographer. But a “whole life” is hard to find. Everywhere he looks he finds fragments and gaps: bones and husks, boxes of marbles, collections of coins and undated postcards. Trails run cold and mysteries are unresolved.

Phineas feels he is hunting shadows. Like a shaman flying across the globe, his mind tracks the journeys of his subjects to the deserts of Africa and the maelstroms of the Arctic. He meets others building wholes from bits and pieces: taxonomists, ecologists, travel agents offering the trip of your dreams. In the process he also puzzles out his own future – but how will he find his way out of the labyrinth? Tantalizing, comic and rueful, The Biographer’s Tale is a modern delight, a colour-filled novel of detection and desire.

A.S. Byatt, author of the Booker Prize-winning Possession is one of Britain’s leading novelists. Her recent, highly acclaimed Babel Tower was the last part of a trilogy of the post-war years which began with The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life. Her latest collection of short stories was Elementals (1998). She was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1999.