The Modern Fairies
  • Published: 17 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241672457
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $35.00

The Modern Fairies

Formats & editions
Hardback
17 Sep 2024
EBook
13 Jun 2024
Audiobook
13 Jun 2024
Pre-order from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Find local retailers Find local retailers Abbeys Angus & Robertson Boomerang Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Your Bookstore

Brilliant and bawdy, witty and provocative: a dazzling novel about scandals and secrets, and the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.

Why don't they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?

Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV's fever dream. It's a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you'll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here - no matter how highly born they are.

No one knows this better than Madame Marie d'Aulnoy. Each week, a rogue group of intellectuals gather at her Parisian home to debate, flirt and perform Contes de Fées - fairy tales - that challenge the status quo, at a salon that will change the course of literature forever. But while they weave tales of glass slippers, enchanted beasts and long-haired princesses, a wolf is lurking, who threatens to destroy the members of the salon one by one.

Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, The Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.
  • Published: 17 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241672457
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Clare Pollard

Clare Pollard is an award-winning poet and playwright based in London. She is the author of five poetry collections and the Editor of the Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. Delphi is her first novel.

Also by Clare Pollard

Delphi
Fierce Bad Rabbits
See all

Praise for The Modern Fairies

Pollard's future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed

The i, praise for DELPHI

'Brilliant ... Born of searing eloquence and sinister wit'

Jackie Polzin, author of BROOD, praise for DELPHI

This feels impressive ... What good fiction is meant to do

New York Times, praise for DELPHI

Vivid as fireworks ... Both terrifying and exhilarating

Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A GHOST IN THE THROAT, praise for DELPHI

Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angela Carter and Anaïs Nin - the book I really really needed

Sarah Perry, author of THE ESSEX SERPENT

Funny, filthy, dancingly clever ... A delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairytales, set against the lavish decadence of 1600s Versailles. I gobbled it all up

Joanna Quinn, author of THE WHALEBONE THEATRE

The Modern Fairies gives us intimate access to the most prestigious of private Parisian salons. In a novel both aching and cruel, sumptuous and tender, Pollard’s beautiful writing leads us along winding pathways. Through its prickling branches to exquisite clearings of hope, this book consumed me.

Katie Hale, author of MY NAME IS MONSTER

Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable

Karen Joy Fowler, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES

Lush and gossipy, rich and wonderfully indulgent. The Modern Fairies is wickedly playful yet lingers, with emotional truth, long after reading. A feast of a novel. I dare you to read it!

Molly Aitken, author of THE ISLAND CHILD