Madame Zero

*WINNER OF THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2020*

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE 2018



LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2018



WINNER OF THE EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

WINNER OF AN O.HENRY PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION





She is running and becoming smaller, running and becoming smaller, running in the light of the reddening sun, the red of her hair and her coat falling, the red of her fur and her body loosening. Running. Holding behind her a sudden, brazen object, white-tipped. Her yellow scarf trails in the briar. All vestiges shed.



Sarah Hall is an exquisite chronicler of landscapes - rural, industrial, psychological - and these haunting stories reveal a writer at the peak of her powers. Rich in the mythic symbolism of wilderness and wasteland, these tales blur the natural and urban, mundane and surreal, human and animal. Written in Hall's lyrical prose, this uncannily disturbing collection glitters with poetic and erotic imagery. Marked by a fascination with the intimacy of nature - and the nature of intimacy - Madame Zero is a stunning new collection from an author twice nominated for the Booker Prize.



Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. Twice nominated for the Man Booker prize, she is the award-winning author of five novels and two short story collections - The Beautiful Indifference, which won the Edge Hill and Portico prizes, and Madame Zero, winner of the East Anglian Book Award and the 2018 Edge Hill Readers' Choice Award, and a Guardian and Sunday Times book of the year 2017. She is currently the only author to be three times shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, winning it in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox'.