Passion, The

'A fantasy, a vivid dream...inventive and brilliant' Guardian Henri has a passion for Napoleon - but Napoleon has a passion for chicken. As soldier and emperor butcher their way across Europe, glory falls to ruin and love turns to hate. But, when Henri encounters the red-haired, web-footed Villanelle, he discovers in her an equal. Together they abandon their pasts, and flee to the Venetian canals to meet their singular destiny in the city of chance and disguises. 'A deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so.' New York Times Review: It's a fantasy, a vivid dream... inventive and brilliant * Guardian * As moving and funny as it is skilful, and reflects the author's formidable appetite for life * Sunday Times * A book of great imaginative audacity and assurance...brilliantly physical (and funny) detail * Times Literary Supplement * Its concentrated, beautifully detailed prose recalls the diction of fairy tales; its plot incorporates their magic, their shrewd wit and brutality...a deeply imagined and beautiful book, often arrestingly so * New York Times * Lyrical prose penetrates to the heart of things... She knows how to speak plain truth and at the same time satisfy our longing for the fabulous. She's telling you stories. Trust her * Washington Post * An explosively imaginative writer * London Free Press * A historical novel quite different from any other...written with a living passion, an eyewitness immediacy... Winterson is a master of her material, a writer in whom great talent deeply abides * Vanity Fair * Recalls Garcia Marquez... Magical touches dance like highlights over the brilliance of this fairy tale about passion, gambling, madness, and androgynous ecstasy * Edmund White * The overwhelming impression of her work is one of remarkable self-confidence, and she evidently thrives on risk... As good as Poe: it dares you to laugh and stares you down * New York Review of Books * Author Biography: Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. She published her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, at twenty-five. Over two decades later she revisited that material in her internationally bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson has written thirteen novels for adults and two previous collections of short stories, as well as children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.