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The Beautiful Indifference
- Author: Sarah Hall
- Category: Fiction Literary
- Publisher: Faber & Faber (UK)
- Pub date: 17 November 2011
- Length: 208 pages
About The Beautiful Indifference
Sarah Hall’s four novels have already shown her to be a writer of extraordinary talents… With her first short-story collection, her writing takes another leap forward
– GUARDIAN
THE BEAUTIFUL INDIFFERENCE is a collection of intensely erotic and disarming tales, which span centuries, contemporary life and the future, evoking landscapes as diverse as London’s metropolis and Lake Vuotjärvi in the Finnish wilderness.
This exquisite anthology embodies stories of an impulsive and startling nature: a woman who chooses not to save her drowning lover; a frustrated housewife who arranges an appointment with the mysterious ‘Agency’; a young girl enamoured with a notorious Cumbrian horse-breeding family who innocently unleashes their wrath. Each story rotates on an axis of survivalism – geographical, psychological and sexual – so that animals and humans alike are hunted and exposed across the pages.
Sarah Hall has been described as “the greatest novelist of her generation”, and in this rich and immensely intoxicating collection she showcases her incredible talent for fusing unsettling narratives to sensual and alluring effect.
About the Author
Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize.
In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC award. It was chosen as one of the Times Best 100 Books of the Decade.
Her fourth novel, How To Paint A Dead Man, was published in 2009. It was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in the same year and won the Portico Prize in 2010. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is working on a fifth novel and a collection of short stories.
Sarah Hall is an honorary fellow of Aberystwyth University, and a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2007). She was a member of Art Council England, North-West region 2008-2009. She regularly tutors for the Faber Academy, the Arvon Foundation, and has taught creative writing in a variety of establishments in the UK and abroad. She currently lives in Cumbria.