Smith, Ali
Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1962- ) Scottish author, active from the early 1980s, prominent from the beginning of the twenty-first century for incisive world-facing though non-fantastic novels, beginning with Hotel World (2001). There But For The (2011) surreally recounts the effects of a dinner guest's refusal to leave the room where he has locked himself in: echoes of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street" (November-December 1853 Putnam's Magazine) are seen as ruthlessly transfigured in the marketized Media Landscape of a later century.
Smith is of specific sf interest for Gliff (2024), set in a very Near-Future Dystopian surveillance society whose coercive omnipresence is tokened by the sudden imposition of a red line around the home of the two young protagonists of the tale, who therefore by this sign become "unverified". There is no Zone for them to take shelter in. The have-not world they are cut loose into demands survival tactics. Their possible flourishing may occupy <Glyph>, an expected sequel.
She was appointed CBE in 2015. [JC]
Ali Smith
born Inverness, Scotland: 24 August 1962
works (highly selected)
- There But For The (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2011) [hb/]
- Gliff (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2024) [hb/]
links
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