A. S. Byatt's fairy-tales and fables are among the best-loved features of her fiction-whether standing alone or inset like jewelled parables in the middle of a complex novel. Innumerable readers have asked for the two marvellous fairy-tales in Possession - 'The Glass Coffin' and 'Gode's Tale' tale of the Breton Baie des Trepasses to be published separately. Here they take their place with three other stories with medieval and oriental settings - 'Tongues of Fire' (written for an international writers' project for aid for Sarajevo), and the title story 'The Djinn in the Nightgale's Eye'. This long story, about an Englishwoman in Turkey who unwittingly releases a genie from his bottle, is a substantial new work, a reflection on women's lives, on magic and on the power of storytelling itself.
- ISBN10 0701162783
- ISBN13 9780701162788
- Publish Date 17 November 1994
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 20 April 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Chatto & Windus
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English