"SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE and the ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION A masterful, exuberant novel from the acclaimed author of How to be both and the ongoing Seasonal quartet 'Ali Smith has got style, ideas and punch. Read her' Jeanette Winterson 'As infectious as a pop song, the story bursts open from the very first page and demands to be read in one sitting' The Times 'Hotel World is essential reading from a major talent' Independent Five people: four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead. In her highly acclaimed and most ambitious book to date, the brilliant young Scottish writer Ali Smith brings alive five unforgettable characters and traces their intersecting lives. This is a short novel with big themes (time, chance, money, death) but an eye for tiny detail: the taste of dust, the weight of a few coins in the hand, the pleasurable pain of a stone in one's shoe . . ."