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Gliff

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Gliff

By: Ali Smith
Narrated by: Eliot Sumner
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

©2025 Ali Smith (P)2025 Penguin Audio Dystopian Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Women's Fiction
All stars
Most relevant
Perfect narration. Bri’s voice will remain with me for a long time. Should be required listening and give us all more than pause for thought. Brilliant Ali Smith at her most relevant.

Tender, beautiful, disturbing and deeply relevant.

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I need to relisten and read this as it’s quite confusing. I love the way Ali plays with ideas and language. V clever and dystopian and definitely one for the right group to discuss

Difficult one to narrate (by one of sting’s kids) so they did well

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I found the narrator on this one really hard to follow. They were very monotonous and it made the book seem so much more boring than it was. I stopped listening to this and read the rest as an ebook and absolutely loved it once I did that, I finished it in a few days! I think even if the narration was good this book doesn't translate well to audio as there's a lot of word-play with homophones etc which arent picked up on easily when listening. So for the book itself, story, characters, Ali Smith's writing etc; 10/10. However the audiobook is a definite 0/10 for me.

Great book - dull narration

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The reader completely embraced and became the main character. An intriguing and terrifying world through a young person's eyes.

Superb well read short story

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This is a great book. I wish I hadn't purchased on audible as I find the narration is so monotone it doesn't capture the inventiveness of the writing. I found it hard to stick with and have purchased a copy of the book which is brilliant.

Narration flat unfortunately

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