Possession: Vintage 21

"As always, Byatt wields beautiful prose, and the mix of prose and poetry gives the book a sensuality as mysterious as anything in the plot" (Elizabeth Kostova)

"Intelligent, ingenious and humane" (Times Literary Supplement)

"Intelligent, literary, and ambitious...combines the drive of the thriller with the 19th-century novel, and throughout she threads the poetry and passion of ''romance''....races to a riotous final scene of storms and graveyards" (The Times)

"You turn its last page feeling stunned and elated, happy to have had the chance to read it. This is a novel for every taste: a heartbreaking Victorian love story, a take-no-prisoners comedy of contemporary academic life, and an unputdownable supernatural mystery that starts with an old book in a London library and ends on a storm-wracked night in a churchyard before an open grave." (Washington Post)

"Proves that a serious, intricate book can also be a page turner...manifest intelligence, subtle humor and extraordinary texturing of the past within the present make Possession original and unforgettable" (Time)

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a captivating love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.