From the award-winning author of Possession comes an ingenious novel about love and literary sleuthing: a dazzling fiction woven out of one man’s search for fact.

Here is the story of Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted graduate student who decides to escape the world of postmodern literary theory and immerse himself in the messiness of “real life” by writing a biography of a great biographer. In a series of adventures that are by turns intellectual and comic, scientific and sensual, Phineas tracks his subject to the deserts of Africa and the maelstrom of the Arctic. Along the way he comes to rely on two women, one of whom may be the guide he needs out of the dizzying labyrinth of his research and back into his own life. A tantalizing yarn of detection and desire, The Biographer’s Tale is a provocative look at “truth” in biography and our perennial quest for certainty.

A.S.拜厄特（A. S. Byatt）

英國著名女作傢、文學評論傢。1936年8月24日齣生於謝菲爾德。先後畢業於劍橋大學、牛津大學，1972年起在倫敦大學學院教授英語文學。1983年辭去教職專事寫作，同年成為英國皇傢文學協會會員。1990年，獲頒大英帝國司令勛章。1999年，獲頒大英帝國女爵士勛章。

主要作品有《占有》《孩子們的書》《天使與昆蟲》《傳記作傢的傳記：一部小說》等。