The best-written British novel of the century (and hardly anyone's read it)

Plus the best-written SF/fantasy novel of the century

Photo by Dorothy Lin

In today’s issue:

—’It wasn’t just during winters the ghost bags came in, rolling over across the dawn-hard fields from distant miles, tumbling for so long on themselves, inside out or inflated, bloated, as when Murdo in The Albannach found the ballooned-up dog, buried just beneath the sand, or in Gillespie: a living eel emerged from the drowned fisherman’s mouth, from its coiled home in his swollen stomach’: the best-written British novel of the century to date, and maybe also the best. This is part of our search for the best-written books of the century.

—‘Bodies who think language, who cry with their mouths and leak water from their eyes, who are clawless but vicious in their own hunger to reach out. Who have touched so much of the void-home already, and dwell in it, and have come so very close to the jumpgates behind which are all of our blood-homes, new and old’: the century’s best-written winner of the Hugo Award for best novel.

If you’d like us to consider yo…