Adopted into a family of Pentecostal Evangelists, Jeanette Winterson grew up in a fervently religious home. She was raised to believe that she "belonged to God and had been chosen by God, and because God was empowering her, she could do anything." From the age of eight she began writing and deliv

Eclectic, Lyrical, Postmodern fiction, Profane, Queer, Queer literature, Visceral

Fairy tales, Gothic fiction, a baroque sensibility, feminism, gender bending, and science fiction: from this mélange emerges Angela Carter's fiction. A phantasmagoric opus that wavers between the horrific, the erotic, and the humorous, Carter's work is a series of appropriations and transformation

Fantastic, Fantasy, Feminist, Lyrical, Mythic, Postmodern fiction, Women's literature

Julian Barnes treats history with a whip of irony. An indignant yet playful voice streams through his novels, a voice that asks just how dependent we are on our past and why. Is history a crutch that actually handicaps us? Is our belief that the past offers the ultimate purchase on truth a massive de

Contemplative, Elegant, Ironic, Playful, Postmodern fiction, Sardonic

In the introduction to her novel "Babel Tower," A.S. Byatt says that her intention was to write a book without metaphors. Apparently this proved a difficult feat: "The best I could do was a kind of regretful commentary on the impossibility of refraining from metaphor." Right. Byatt is a serious m

Clever, Composed, Contemplative, Eclectic, Playful, Postmodern fiction, Sophisticated