Ghosts don’t exist. They don’t. End of.

Story, however. It is haunting. Everything tells it.

It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. Is it imaginary? Is it real? Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. What to do? She phones her sister.

In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness. This anti-war novel, Ali Smith’s most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world.

A standalone novel, it’s family to Gliff (2024).