SHORTLISTED FOR THE TADEUSZ BRADECKI PRIZE''Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angela Carter and Anaïs Nin - the book I really really needed'' SARAH PERRY, author of The Essex Serpent''The sentences sing on the page with wit and intelligence ... This memorable novel reminds the reader of the enduring power of storytelling to transform and even save lives, then and now'' THE NEW YORK TIMESWhy don''t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV''s fever dream. It''s a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you''ll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here - no matter how highly born they are.No one knows this better than Madame Marie d''Aulnoy. Each week, a rogue group of intellectuals gather at her Parisian home to debate, flirt and perform Contes de Fées - fairy tales - that challenge the status quo, at a salon that will change the course of literature forever. But while they weave tales of glass slippers, enchanted beasts and long-haired princesses, a wolf is lurking, who threatens to destroy the members of the salon one by one.Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, The Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.''Funny, filthy, dancingly clever: a delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairytales. It reminded me of Jeanette Winterson''s The Passion, and I gobbled it all up'' JOANNA QUINN, author of The Whalebone Theatre''Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable'' KAREN JOY FOWLER, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves''Pollard''s future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed'' THE I, praise for Delphi