Eley Williams – författare

A WINNER OF THE 2021 BETTY TRASK AWARDSSHORTLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2021__________________________'Joyous' SPECTATOR'Remarkable' SUNDAY TIMES'A playful delight... A glorious novel' OBSERVERSwansby's New Encyclopaedic Dictionary is riddled with fictitious entries known as mountweazels penned by Peter Winceworth, a man wishing to make his lasting mark back in 1899. It's up to young intern Mallory to uncover these mountweazels before the dictionary can be digitised for modern readers.Lost in Winceworth's imagination - a world full of meaningless words - will Mallory finally discover the secret to living a meaningful life?__________________________'Made me almost tearful with gratitude that a book as clever as this could give such uncomplicated pleasure ... And when you find a book like this, you grab it, and you hold it close.' JOHN SELF'A delight ... As funny and vivid as Dickens, as moving and memorable as Nabokov ... An extraordinarily large-hearted work.' THE CRITIC'Deft and clever, refreshing and rewarding ... An assured and satisfying writer, her language rich and intricate and her characters rounded enough to be sympathetic and lampoonist enough to be terribly funny.' LITERARY REVIEW'[The] most exciting of young British writers ... Williams luxuriates in words and wordplay, in definition and precision and invention ...The Liar's Dictionary is a public joy, and Eley Williams a free-spirited literary kook with bags of potential.' BIG ISSUE'A singular, hilarious, word-drunk novel, which I suspect will be seen in the future as a classic comic novel.' DAVID HAYDEN, IRISH TIMES'The Liar's Dictionary is the book I was longing for ... Positively intoxicated with the joy and wonder of language ... Eley Williams brings erudition and playfulness - and lovely sweetness - to every page.' BENJAMIN DREYER, New York Times bestselling author of DREYER'S ENGLISH'This tale of lexical intrigues is an absolute joy to read! It's gloriously inventive and playful, but with just the right amount of heart.' LUCY SCHOLES

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE A Granta Best Young British Novelist 'A thrilling love for the stuff of language … Magical' JON McGREGOR ‘Poignant and playful’DAILY MAIL ‘A writer with few real rivals’IRISH TIMES 'A visionary writer' JAN CARSON The stunning new collection of stories from the award-winning author of The Liar’s Dictionary and Attrib. and Other Stories. Granta Best Young British novelist and acclaimed author of Attrib. and other stories, Eley Williams returns with a thrilling collection of short stories exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient – from the easy gamesmanship of contagious yawns to the horror of a smile fixed for just a second too long.A courtroom sketch artist delights in committing portraits of their lover to paper but their need to capture likenesses forever is revealed to have darker, more complex intentions. A child’s schoolyard crush on a saint marks a confrontation with the reality of a teenage body in flux. Elsewhere, an editor of canned laughter loses their confidence and seeks divine intervention, and an essayist annotates their thoughts on Keats by way of internet-gleaned sex tips.Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good hums with fossicking language and ingenious experiments in form and considers notions of playfulness, authenticity and care as it holds relationships to account: their sweet misunderstandings, soured reflections, queer wish fulfilments and shared, held breaths. ‘Undeniably a skilful book’TELEGRAPH ‘Stories that work from the inside out… glancing,intriguing’GUARDIAN 'Erudite and audacious' KEIRAN GODDARD‘Frequently brilliant and deeply pleasurable’ CAOILINN HUGHES‘I don’t know anyone else who can write like this … What a joy!' BEN PESTER‘A joy for the head and the heart' RUBY COWLING

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE A Granta Best Young British Novelist 'A thrilling love for the stuff of language … Magical' JON McGREGOR ‘Poignant and playful’DAILY MAIL ‘A writer with few real rivals’IRISH TIMES 'A visionary writer' JAN CARSON The stunning new collection of stories from the award-winning author of The Liar’s Dictionary and Attrib. and Other Stories. Granta Best Young British novelist and acclaimed author of Attrib. and other stories, Eley Williams returns with a thrilling collection of short stories exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient – from the easy gamesmanship of contagious yawns to the horror of a smile fixed for just a second too long.A courtroom sketch artist delights in committing portraits of their lover to paper but their need to capture likenesses forever is revealed to have darker, more complex intentions. A child’s schoolyard crush on a saint marks a confrontation with the reality of a teenage body in flux. Elsewhere, an editor of canned laughter loses their confidence and seeks divine intervention, and an essayist annotates their thoughts on Keats by way of internet-gleaned sex tips.Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good hums with fossicking language and ingenious experiments in form and considers notions of playfulness, authenticity and care as it holds relationships to account: their sweet misunderstandings, soured reflections, queer wish fulfilments and shared, held breaths. ‘Undeniably a skilful book’TELEGRAPH ‘Stories that work from the inside out… glancing,intriguing’GUARDIAN 'Erudite and audacious' KEIRAN GODDARD‘Frequently brilliant and deeply pleasurable’ CAOILINN HUGHES‘I don’t know anyone else who can write like this … What a joy!' BEN PESTER‘A joy for the head and the heart' RUBY COWLING

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE A Granta Best Young British Novelist 'A thrilling love for the stuff of language … Magical' JON McGREGOR ‘Poignant and playful’DAILY MAIL ‘A writer with few real rivals’IRISH TIMES 'A visionary writer' JAN CARSON The stunning new collection of stories from the award-winning author of The Liar’s Dictionary and Attrib. and Other Stories. Granta Best Young British novelist and acclaimed author of Attrib. and other stories, Eley Williams returns with a thrilling collection of short stories exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient – from the easy gamesmanship of contagious yawns to the horror of a smile fixed for just a second too long.A courtroom sketch artist delights in committing portraits of their lover to paper but their need to capture likenesses forever is revealed to have darker, more complex intentions. A child’s schoolyard crush on a saint marks a confrontation with the reality of a teenage body in flux. Elsewhere, an editor of canned laughter loses their confidence and seeks divine intervention, and an essayist annotates their thoughts on Keats by way of internet-gleaned sex tips.Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good hums with fossicking language and ingenious experiments in form and considers notions of playfulness, authenticity and care as it holds relationships to account: their sweet misunderstandings, soured reflections, queer wish fulfilments and shared, held breaths. ‘Undeniably a skilful book’TELEGRAPH ‘Stories that work from the inside out… glancing,intriguing’GUARDIAN 'Erudite and audacious' KEIRAN GODDARD‘Frequently brilliant and deeply pleasurable’ CAOILINN HUGHES‘I don’t know anyone else who can write like this … What a joy!' BEN PESTER‘A joy for the head and the heart' RUBY COWLING

A GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST 2023 WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE 2018 ‘The real inexplicable gorgeous brilliant thing’ MAX PORTER'She has arrived in a class of her own' SARAH PERRY'Funny, playful and utterly bravura' MELISSA HARRISON The thrillingly original, word-of mouth hit short story collection that launched the career of one of our most acclaimed writers, Eley Williams. Attrib. and Other Stories celebrates the tricksiness of language just as it confronts its limits. The stories are littered with the physical ephemera of language: dictionaries, dog-eared pages, bookmarks and old coffee stains on older books. They celebrate the weird, tender intricacies of the everyday where characters vie to ‘ own ’ their words, tell tall tales and define their worlds, all while struggling against our innate inability to communicate exactly what we mean.With affectionate, irreverent and playful prose and a unique combination of intimate storytelling and dizzying formal daring it’s no wonder that Attrib. and Other Stories brilliantly announced the arrival of one of Britain's most loved and most original writers. 'You feel in the safe hands of a storyteller dedicating their talent to our pleasure'OBSERVER 'One of the most promising young British writers to emerge in the past few years'FINANCIAL TIMES