Metamorphic Fictions

Our search for the most extraordinary fiction on the theme of metamorphosis resulted in this collection, which received an Arts Council England grants for the arts award! Buy all four books together and save 15%

• The Lost Spell is Bethlehem Attfield’s award-nominated translation of Yismake Worku’s bestselling Amharic novel Kibur Dingay. Didimos Dore has accidentally turned himself into a dog while dabbling in the occult. Stripped of his humanity and privilege he returns to Addis Abiba in search of the reverse spell. In so doing he sees his home, southern Ethiopia, with new eyes.
• Pupa is the first novel by multi-award winning poet J. O. Morgan. It tells the altopian story of Sal and Megan, two friends who must face the same choice everyone does; whether to enter a perilous pupa stage and emerge as adults, or remain as larvals. Morgan’s finely crafted sentences relate a very recognisable tale of friendship, adolescence and loss.
• In The Tomb Guardians, Paul Griffiths weaves together two conversations around Strigel’s German Renaissance paintings of the guardians at Christ’s tomb. The first by an art historian wrestling with their meaning and place in his life, the second by the men in the paintings themselves. A poignant, illuminating and funny book. ideal for anyone who has ever missed something significant happening right under their noses.
• The Goddess Lens by Pascal O’Loughlin shows us pandemic hit London through the green-tinted lenses of a queer Irish author. Picking apart a particularly pointy love-triangle that is getting in the way of his second book, we also read the work in progress. Then his virtual reality lenses kick in, and all the boundaries become blurred.