Lady Into Fox

Winner of both the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tate Black Prize for Fiction, David Garnett's Lady Into Fox is the story of a man whose wife is turned into a fox. Need we say more? “At last, at last, the Hawthornden has chosen the right book.” – Virginia Woolf

“The whole psychology of man and beast is, I should say, flawless, in essence and exposition.” – Joseph Conrad “It is as astonishing as a new sort of animal…suddenly running about in the world…as whimsically inevitable as a very healthy kitten. It shows up most other stories as the clockwork beasts they are.” – H.G. Wells, The Adelphi

“It is one of the strangest little fictions in the English language. … Garnett's novella has attracted numerous readings: a political allegory about marriage, a fable about female sexuality, a coded love letter to Garnett's former lover, the painter Duncan Grant.” – Judith Mackrell, The Guardian

“The story of Lady Into Fox is gripping and terrible…. What I love best about this story is its straight-faced, ever so slightly sly prose… The author uses humor, fantasy, allegory and realism to explore to explore pain, passion, conjugal fidelity, love, death and the whole damn thing.” – Andrew Barrow, Independent

“Garnett’s story intimates that the sexual relation rests on the delusion that kin can be converted into kind. If the fable also applies to same-sex love (and I think it does), then perhaps Garnett’s point is darker still: every kind attempt we make to “claim kin” with one another is a sort of violence. Wild we begin toward one another—at day’s end, wild we remain.” – Maud Ellmann, Public Books

Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative. watersgreen.wix.com/watersgreenhouse