Mount Old Scholar A.S. Byatt’s beloved tale ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye‘ is adapted by Australian film director George Miller for his latest work, ‘3000 Years of Longing‘ which was released in UK cinemas this week.
Byatt’s novella, described in the LA Times as “quietly daring, an intricate, unfolding puzzle box, first ran in The Paris Review. A yarn about a scholar and a djinn serves as a proscenium for tales from many sources, from Scheherazade to the TV news. They all probe the theme of the Turkish narratology conference where the two principals meet: “Stories of Women’s Lives.” Together, they prove that classical fantasy and unembroidered realism needn’t stand at odds. Rather, their alchemy produces a potent way to view our world.” Byatt’s original is a reflection on women’s lives, on magic and on the power of storytelling itself.
Antonia Byatt attended The Mount 1949-1954 and attended Newnham College, Cambridge, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania and Somerville College, Oxford. She is a novelist, short-story writer and literary critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.