Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis

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According to Ovid, when Iphis's mother fell pregnant, her husband threatened to kill the child if it was a girl. When Iphis was born, her mother raised her as a boy. Later, Iphis fell in love with another girl, and prayed to be allowed to marry her. The gods responded by transforming Iphis into a man, so that she could wed the love of her life. From the bones of this great cross-gender myth, Ali Smith conjures a spellbinding story that leaps across the centuries, making the myth sing again.

Author Bio

ALI SMITH's works of fiction include the novel Hotel World, which was short-listed for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award, and The Accidental, which won the Whitbread Award and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her story collections include Free Love, which won a Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award, The Whole Story and Other Stories, and How to be Both, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2015. Born in Inverness, Scotland, Smith lives in Cambridge, England.