A S Byatt’s fairy tales and fables are among the best-loved features of her fiction. Innumerable readers have asked for the two marvellous fairy tales in Posession - ‘The Glass Coffin’ and ‘Gode’s Tale’ of the Breton Naie des Trepasses - to be published seperately.

Here they take their place with three other stories with medieval and oriental settings. The title story, ‘The Djinn and the Nightingale’s Eye’, a long story about an Englishwoman in Turkey who unwittingly releases a genie from his bottle, is a reflection on women’s lives, on magic and on the power of storytelling itself.