AP — LONDON — At the age of 87, British novelist A.S. Byatt, whose works include the Booker Prize-winning book “Possession,” passed away.
Chatto & Windus, Byatt’s publisher, announced on Friday that the writer passed away “peacefully at home surrounded by close family.”
Beginning with her debut book, “The Shadow of the Sun,” in 1964, Byatt authored two dozen books.
“Possession,” which debuted in 1990, centers on two contemporary scholars who are researching the lives of two Victorian poets. The work, which deftly blends mock-Victorian prose with a contemporary romance, became a massive bestseller and was awarded the esteemed Booker Prize. Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart starred in the 2002 film adaptation of it.
Her other works include the four novels known as the Frederica Quartet, which are set in 1950s and 60s Britain includes “The Virgin in the Garden,” which was published in 1978, followed by “Still Life,” “Babel Tower,” and “A Whistling Woman.” She also wrote “The Children’s Book,” a historical novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2009.
Her collections of short stories include “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye,” the title tale of which was nominated for the 1995 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and served as the basis for George Miller’s “Mad Max” film “Three Thousand Years of Longing” in 2022.
“Medusa’s Ankles,” another collection of stories, was released in 2021.
The author “held readers spellbound” with prose that was “multi-layered, endlessly varied and deeply intellectual, threaded through with myths and metaphysics,” according to Byatt’s literary agent, Zoe Waldie.
The works written by Byatt, who has had 38 translations published, are described as “the most wonderful jewel-boxes of stories and ideas” by Clara Farmer, publisher of Chatto & Windus.
Farmer stated, “We mourn her passing, but it’s consoling to know that her insightful works will dazzle, shine, and refract in readers’ minds for generations to come.”
Byatt, whose sister is novelist Margaret Drabble, was born Antonia Drabble in Sheffield, Northern England in 1936. She was raised in a Quaker household, went to Cambridge University, and worked as a lecturer at universities.
Before becoming divorced, she was married to economist Ian Byatt in 1959, and the two had a son and a daughter. Charles, her 11-year-old son, was killed in 1972 when he was hit by a car on his way home from school.
Shortly after Byatt accepted a teaching position at University College London to help pay for his private school tuition, Charles passed away. She worked at the company for “as long as he had lived, which was 11 years,” she said in a 2009 interview with The Guardian. She left in 1983 to pursue writing full-time.
Byatt had two daughters and shared a London apartment with her second husband, Peter Duffy.