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Smith, Ali : How To Be Both: Both Edition Variants

Hamish Hamilton, London, England, 2014

ISBN 024114521X

First Edition / First Printing. As New in As New Dust Jacket. 372 pages. The author's seventh novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published as two variant editions in small and limited first print runs as hardcover originals only. The narrative-texts are the same. But by switching their parts (Part One and Part Two), the editions breathe new life to their (intentionally banal) title. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Ali Smith's "How To Be Both". A Modernist masterpiece of playful, brilliant, and thoughtful storytelling. The novel has been issued in two editions that will be savored and experienced by the captive reader somewhat differently from each other, depending on which variant he or she reads. The experience becomes even more complex and tantalizing when one reads both variants, one after the other. " 'Which comes first? ' Depending on which version you pick up, this conversation comes either late in the book or somewhere in the middle. The novel consists of two parts, both numbered One. You can read the two parts of 'How To Be Both' in either order, which underlines the point about the layering and simultaneity of experiences separated by time" (The Independent). Despite our own best efforts to subvert it (through fantasy or science or even literature), we live, inescapably, in linear time, "one after the other", and this fact affects what we call experience. Do things simply go away or do they somehow linger and stay? Do things that already happened not exist anymore because we can't see them before our eyes? Will one ever be anything other than what one has always been known to be? These are the simplest, most basic questions about what it means to be, "existential" in the best sense of the word, that Ali Smith's triumphant novel revives and asks again, and answers both ways. An absolute "must-have" title for Ali Smith collectors. These copies of "How To Be Both" Edition Variants are both very prominently and beautifully signed, placed, and dated (shortly after publication) in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "Ali Smith 16 September 2014 in London". They are signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is one of only two such signed, placed, and post-publication dated sets of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, pristine beauties. Please note: Do not short yourself. The British Edition precedes the American by six months. The latter appeared in December 2014 as a paperback original only. A rare signed set thus. One of the most brilliant novelists of our time. A fine collectible set. . ISBN 024114521X.

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