The first of two new, interconnected novels from bestselling, award-winning, Booker-Prize shortlisted author Ali Smith

Following her dazzling five-novel portrait of our age, the 'Seasonal' sequence, Ali Smith returns with the first of two novels which belong together but can be read independently.

Gliff - a Scots or Northern word for a glimpse, a shock, a glance - will not only tell its own story but also contain within it a hidden story, to be revealed only in a second novel, Glyph - from the Greek, meaning a mark, carving or symbol - to be published a year later.

In form and feeling, Gliff will light a new, fabular and fabulist path for Ali Smith and for us through the gathering darkness of our chaotic times.

O brave new world, that has such people in't.

Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.

What does it mean?

It's a truism of our time that it'll be the next generation who'll sort out our increasingly toxic world.

What would that actually be like?

In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?

And what's a horse got to do with any of this?

Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it's a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.

'As always, Ali's inventiveness and intelligence lit fireworks in my mind. Gliff is an irresistible invitation to rethink and reword our way to a truly brave new world' Michelle de Kretser