'Possession' is one of the best English novels of the late 20th century and undoubtedly Antonia Byatt's finest work. However, the word 'novel' can be applied to this amazing prose only conditionally. What is before us? A detective novel of ideas? A women's Gothic novel in a modern performance? A chivalric romance in a new way? All of this together - and something more, a deeply modern work that has absorbed many traditions and at the same time is marked by the seal of genuine inspiration and innovation. The mystery of the English spirit and English greatness shimmers in its many facets.

But above all, this book is about living people (even if some of them are long dead), whose images haunt the reader; about love, a rebellious and furious passion that conquers time and death; about the aspirations of the spirit and the flesh, earthly and sublime, obvious and hidden; and of the divine Plan, which is discernible in the tragic and comic patterns of human destiny... Through the mirror labyrinth of the plot, the characters of this bizarre narrative make their way into the mysterious past: the inhabitants of the era of men—into the era of heroes, and the inhabitants of the era of heroes—into the era of gods. Two elements reign on these pages—the element of the mind, the brilliance of thought, almost sensual, and the element of subtle eroticism, born from the contact of the rough matter of life with the delicate fabrics of fantasy.

'Possession' occupies a unique place in the history of modern literature and, with its profound national originality, belongs to the whole world. Now, a quarter of a century after the publication of Byatt's masterpiece, the Booker Prize, awarded in 1990, seems insufficient. Just as, perhaps, the Order of the British Empire, presented to the author a little later, is also insufficient...