The Modern Fairies

<p><b>‘A novel with oodles of charm’ <i>The Times</i><br><br>‘Elegant, decadent, vulgar, clever, enchanting and dark’ Sarah Perry, author of <i>Enlightenment</i></b><br><br>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.<br><br>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 <i>Contes de Fées </i>- 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.<br><br>Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, <i>The Modern Fairies</i> is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.<br><br><b>‘Funny, filthy, dancingly clever ... A delectable confection of many-layered pleasures … I gobbled it all up, Joanna Quinn, author of <i>The Whalebone Theatre</i><br><br>‘The sentences sing on the page with wit and intelligence ... Reminds the reader of the enduring power of storytelling to transform and even save lives, then and now’ <i>The New York Times</i></b></p>