Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit made Jeanette Winterson a best-selling author at the age of 24. Since then, she has built up a bold, queer oeuvre, tirelessly exploring the theme of gender and the body. In the thirteen short stories of Night Side of the River, she combines ghost stories and science fiction to examine the future of humanity. Who will haunt us tomorrow?

Winterson was raised in a strict Pentecostal family in which books – except for the Bible and (poor) crime novels – were forbidden. Her autobiographical debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was published forty years ago, quickly gained cult status. She is now one of the most influential contemporary British writers. Jeanette Winterson remains a pioneer and is the author of a unique and bold oeuvre that is haunted by questions of gender and the body. Her work continues to haunt us.

dante and stephen king

Jeanette Winterson loves ghost stories. After Frankissstein, her ultramodern rewriting of Mary Shelley from 2021, the author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? returns with Night Side of the River. Drawing on a tradition that owes as much to Dante and Dickens as Stephen King and Shirley Jackson, Winterson presents thirteen short stories inspired by Gothic novels, horror, science fiction and technology. The stories are poignant, ironic, moving, sometimes autobiographical and always brilliant, and deal with our past and future ghosts. They examine grief, superstition, the power of AI and the limits of our humanity.

Jeanette Winterson rarely makes public appearances, but for the Passa Porta Festival she has agreed to give a lecture, followed by a Q&A with the audience and a book signing.

‘Winterson the artist at her most potent’

The Guardian

‘With this collection she exorcizes her great fear that the world of the future will be barren and inhumane and composed only of ghosts.’

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