MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST WINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN S PRIZE FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE 2014 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD WINNER OF THE SALTIRE LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD A Best Book of the Year NPR Financial Times Passionate compassionate vitally inventive and scrupulously playful Ali Smith s novels are like nothing else Borrowing from painting s fresco technique to make an original literary double take How to be both is a novel all about art s versatility It s a fast moving genre bending conversation between forms times truths and fictions There s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s There s the child of a child of the 1960s Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless structural gets playful knowing gets mysterious fictional gets real and all life s givens get given a second chance SHORT LISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2014 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD WINNER OF THE SALTIRE LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD A Best Book of the Year NPR Financial Times Passionate compassionate vitally inventive and scrupulously playful Ali Smith s novels are like nothing else A true original she is a one of a kind literary sensation Her novels consistently attract serious acclaim and discussion and have won her a dedicated readership who are drawn again and again to the warmth humanity and humor of her voice How to be both is a novel all about art s versatility Borrowing from painting s fresco technique to make an original literary double take it s a fast moving genre bending conversation between forms times truths and fictions There s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s There s the child of a child of the 1960s Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless structural gets playful knowing gets mysterious fictional gets real and all life s givens get given a second chance A NOTE TO THE READER Who says s