The Modern Fairies

''Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angela Carter and Anaïs Nin - the book I really really needed'' SARAH PERRY, author of The Essex SerpentWhy don''t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV''s fever dream. It''s a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you''ll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here - no matter how highly born they are.No one knows this better than Madame Marie d''Aulnoy. Each week, a rogue group of intellectuals gather at her Parisian home to debate, flirt and perform Contes de Fées - fairy tales - that challenge the status quo, at a salon that will change the course of literature forever. But while they weave tales of glass slippers, enchanted beasts and long-haired princesses, a wolf is lurking, who threatens to destroy the members of the salon one by one.Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, The Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.''Funny, filthy, dancingly clever: a delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairytales. It reminded me of Jeanette Winterson''s The Passion, and I gobbled it all up'' JOANNA QUINN, author of The Whalebone Theatre''Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable'' KAREN JOY FOWLER, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves''Pollard''s future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed'' THE I, praise for Delphi