“Her way of writing compulsively, with a notebook always at hand, and her ability to create complex plots were remarkable,” said editor Clara Farmer, quoted in the British group’s statement on the writer’s death. “We mourn her death. , but it is comforting to know that the sharpness of her works will mark readers for generations to come”, continued Clara Farmer, adding that “Antonia’s books are wonderful games of stories and ideas.”Antonia Susan Byatt was born on August 24, 1936, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, northern England. He studied at Cambridge and then at Oxford. He taught English and American literature at the University of London, before dedicating himself solely to writing from 1983, around 20 years after the publication of his first novel, “Shadow of a Sun” ( 1964).Her first book talks about a young woman who grew up under her father’s rule. The second, “The Game”, which appeared in 1967, studies the friction between two sisters. Byatt was the daughter of writer John Drabble and sister of novelist Margaret Drabble, author of “The Dark Tide Rises”, with whom she had a difficult relationship, a fact that the British newspaper The Times recalls today, in the profile it dedicates to AS Byatt: “Writer and critic known for her dazzling erudition, great descriptive power and rivalry with her sister Margaret Drabble”.AS Byatt’s dedication to writing, exclusively , appears shortly after beginning the tetralogy dedicated to a Yorkshire family, with “The Virgin in the Garden” (1978), followed by “Still Life” (1985), “The Tower of Babel” (1996) and ” The Whistling Woman” (2002). In 1995, he saw “Angels and Insects” adapted for cinema by Philip Haas, which would also happen, seven years later, “Possession”, translated into film by Neil LaBute , with Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart as protagonists.”Possession” is his most popular, best-known book. “I knew people would like it,” Byatt said in an interview cited by The Times. “It’s the only novel I wrote to be enjoyed, and I did it, in part, to show off. In fact, for the first time, I set a pace taking into account the reader’s attention span.”AS Byatt’s novels multiply in voices, perspectives and even writing styles, depending on the characters and situations. “I like novels with a large number of people and perceptions, not those that have a single, narrow point of view, limited to the author or to one of the characters”, she stated. The level of demand led her to criticize the Harry Potter saga, in 2003, in an opinion piece in The New York Times, in which she stated that JK Rowling’s books were written “for people of imagination limited to cartoons, the world of soap operas, reality shows and celebrity gossip.” At the time, he found support in the writer Fay Weldon (1931-2023), the author of “Life and Love of a Woman Demon”, for whom Byatt was “being a killjoy”, remembering, at the same time, that “a lot of times killjoys are right”. In 2009, Byatt once again seduced the public with “The Children’s Book” , one of the novels shortlisted for that year’s Booker Prize, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial.The short story collection “Medusa’s Ankles”, published in 2021, is his last book.Byatt received the orders of the British Empire, CBE and DBE, in 1990 and 1999, respectively, and the degree of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, among other distinctions. In Portugal, according to the National Library catalogue, his works “O Caixão de Vidro” were translated, by Isabel Cisneiros (Tempus, 1997), “A Fábula do Biologista”, by Fernanda Pinto Rodrigues (Temas e Debates, 2003), and “Possessão: Uma História de Amor”, by António Pescada (Sextante, 2008).
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