One of the most interesting and welcome inclusions on the Booker longlist is this brilliantly inventive debut novel by Selby Wynn Schwartz. Told by a chorus of women's voices across history it is an imagined oral history of feminist art and life. We encounter Natalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Nancy Cunard, Gertrude Stein and Radclyffe Hall, all working, loving, thinking and pushing against the strictures of their times. What holds this together is Schwartz's wonderful prose, at once straightforward and gorgeously lyrical it weaves an utterly beguiling spell. After Sappho is a bravura performance, a boldly experimental but also totally readable novel that genuinely satisfies. #aftersappho #literaryfiction #bookerlonglist #selbywynnschwartz #booksellerrecommends #dauntbooks