Sarah Hall, whose novels have twice been listed for the Man Booker Prize (The Electric Michelangelo, shortlisted 2004, How to Paint a Dead Man, longlisted 2009) has now produced an absorbing and exquisitely well-crafted sequence of short stories, The Beautiful Indifference. It is a remarkable collection of intensely erotic and disarming tales which span past, present and the future, and evoke landscapes as diverse as the London streets, a desolate lake in the Finnish wilderness and (in a story shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award) the Cumbrian fells.

‘Hall is an artist of considerable and concise skill. Each story is a gem, but together they form a collection of astonishingly sensuous power’ – The Sunday Times