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Gliff

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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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I’m not sure this book knows what it’s meant to be - I feel like the author tried to shoehorn in all the popular tropes that seem to get books longlisted currently, much to the detriment of the narrative, readability and impact of the story. The narrator choice was also terrible, completely dull and boring voice with literally no inflection. This was one of the worst audiobooks I’ve listened to this year.

Disappointing on all fronts

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