Written on the Body

Jeanette Winterson

Contents (8)

Acclaim for JEANETTE WINTERSON’S

Written on the Body

“Arresting … a lush story of passion … an affirmation of the freedom to cast off all prescriptions: social, moral, existential, sexual—and in the writing—aesthetic and literary. We are cut off from our assumptions and groomed to enter Winterson’s unsettling polymorphous world.”

—Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Winterson’s skill with fable and fantasy is not just brilliant plumage in this book.… [Her] representations of desire go far beyond male/female; she moves past all dichotomies into a register of sexual imagery where the body is weapon, flora, fauna, weather, animal, geography, prison, food, light, nest, jagged edge: it is the body as whole world. In this novel she found the spot where the Great Chain of Being breaks and none of us know what will become of us, or where we fit.”

—Village Voice

“Brilliant … Stunning passages of romantic rapture [and] anguished tenderness. Written on the Body takes on a certain cinematic splendor.”

—Boston Globe

“A bold, controversial new novel … the story of a white hot passion. [Winterson] is regularly singled out as the most talented writer of her generation.”

—Mirabella

“This is a story of the heart, a foray into the emotional imagination. The language [is] elegiac, passionate, reverential, with echoes of the Song of Solomon. Moving and compassionate, a love letter as much as a love story.”

—Harper’s Bazaar

“A knockout … sexual ecstasy is described with surreal sensuality. Fascinating [and] unforgettable. Winterson writes about the state of passion, casting an obsessed eye on the body, mapping its every detail and secret place. Winterson is an exciting writer. She has literary talent of a high order.”

—Vogue

“A serious display of literary talent. Winterson broods entertainingly about passion, loyalty, beauty, disease, and decay in a language that draws on Donne, Shakespeare, snippets from anatomy texts, and her own unabashed sexiness. A tour de force, with bravado and heart.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Intense … an anatomy of sexual love: Winterson takes an interest in the physiology of love, in the ways it makes the body feel and change, in the body’s centrality to love. She is a scintillating writer, witty, inventive with language.”

—USA Today

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION. FEBRUARY 1994

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc, New York Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, London, in 1992 First published in the United States by Alfred A Knopf, Inc, New York, in 1993

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Winterson, Jeanette, 1959–

Written on the body/Jeanette Winterson —1st Vintage international ed

p cm

eISBN: 978-0-307-76359-4

1 Married women—England—Fiction I Title

[PR6073 I558W56 1994]

823′ 914—dc20 93-23335

v3.1

for Peggy Reynolds with love

My thanks are due to Don and Ruth Rendell whose hospitality gave me the space to work. To Philippa Brewster for her editorial inspiration. To all those at Jonathan Cape who have worked so hard to produce this book.