Publisher Description
Ragnarök retells the finale of Norse mythology. A story of the destruction of life on this planet and the end of the gods themselves. Just as Wagner used this dramatic and catastrophic struggle for the climax of his Ring Cycle, so A.S. Byatt now reinvents it in all its intensity and glory. As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on Britain, one young girl is evacuated to the countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life. Then she is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods—a book of ancient Norse myths—and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. How could this child know that fifty years on many of the birds and flowers she took for granted on her walks to school would become extinct? War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that A.S. Byatt weaves into this most timely of books.
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About A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt (1936–2023) was a distinguished critic and author of numerous works, including Possession: A Romance, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her other works also garnered awards and acclaim, and she was granted numerous honorary degrees. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge; Bryn Mawr College; and Somerville College, Oxford. In 1999 she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
About Harriet Walter
Harriet Walter was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1989 for Best Actress in a Revival for her performances in Twelfth Night, A Question Of, and Three Sisters. In 1999 she was named a Commander of the Order of British Empire by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.