The Modern Fairies

**WINNER OF THE TADEUSZ BRADECKI PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD

'A novel with oodles of charm' The Times

'Elegant, decadent, vulgar, clever, enchanting and dark' Sarah Perry, author of *Enlightenment***

Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV's fever dream. It's a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you'll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here - no matter how highly born they are.

No one knows this better than Madame Marie d'Aulnoy. Each week, a rogue group of intellectuals gather at her Parisian home to debate, flirt and perform Contes de Fées - fairy tales - that challenge the status quo, at a salon that will change the course of literature forever. But while they weave tales of glass slippers, enchanted beasts and long-haired princesses, a wolf is lurking, who threatens to destroy the members of the salon one by one.

Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, The Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.

*'Funny, filthy, dancingly clever ... A delectable confection of many-layered pleasures … I gobbled it all up, Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre*

'The sentences sing on the page with wit and intelligence ... Reminds the reader of the enduring power of storytelling to transform and even save lives, then and now' *The New York Times***