Possess is one of the best English novels of the late 20th century and undoubtedly Antonia Byatt's best work. However, the word “novel” can be applied to this amazing prose very conditionally. What is before us? Detective novel ideas? Women's gothic romance with a modern twist? A chivalric romance in a new way? All together - and something more, a deeply modern thing that has absorbed many traditions and at the same time marked with the stamp of true inspiration and innovation. The mystery of the English spirit and English greatness shimmers in it with different facets. But first of all, this book is about living people (even if some of them have died long ago), whose images come to the reader like an obsession; about love, a rebellious and violent passion that conquers time and death; about the aspirations of spirit and flesh, earthly and sublime, obvious and hidden; and about the divine Plan, which is visible in the tragic and comic patterns of human fate... Through the mirror labyrinth of the plot, the characters of this bizarre story make their way into the mysterious past: the inhabitants of the era of people - in the era of heroes, and the inhabitants of the era of heroes - in 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. “Possess” occupies a unique place in the history of modern literature and, with its deep national originality, belongs to the whole world. Now, a quarter of a century after the release of Byatt's masterpiece, the Man Booker Prize awarded in 1990 seems insufficient. Just as, perhaps, the Order of the British Empire, awarded to the author a little later, is not enough...