Ali Smith (b. 1962) is one of the most fashionable English writers - known in her homeland not only as a novelist, but also as a talented photographer and journalist. Her first collection of short stories, Free Love (1995), won the Best Book of the Year Award and the Scottish Arts Council Award. This was followed by the novel “Like” (1997) and the collection “Other Stories and Other Stories” (1999). The novel Hotel World (2001) was nominated for the 2001 Booker Prize, and the latest novel, Accidental (2005), which received one of the most prestigious English literary awards, the Whitbread prize, at the 2005 Booker. Love and life - two conceptual poles of Ali Smith's work - are the main theme of the novel "How". Love. All-consuming and unrequited, pushing you to do crazy things. How does it feel to realize that you are “empty space” for the person who was everything to you? What can you do after learning this, and how to live on? But this is on the one hand, and on the other... However, it is up to the reader to judge.