A new collection of stories from a writer at the height of her powers—a celebrated stylist admired for her caustic humor, freewheeling imagination, love of humanity and wicked powers of observation. This is a delightful grouping of stories, witty and wise, that includes the return of Sir Edward Feathers, “Old Filth” himself.

Praise for Jane Gardam

“Gardam’s prose is so economical that no moment she describes is either gratuitous or wasted.”—The New Yorker

“Artful, perfectly judged shifts of mood fill The People on Privilege Hill with an abiding sense of joy.”—The Guardian

“Gardam is an exquisite storyteller, picking up threads, laying them down, returning to them and giving them new meaning.”—The Seattle Times

“[Gardam] will bring immense pleasure to readers who treasure fiction that is intelligent, witty, sophisticated.”—The Washington Post

“Gardam is evocative and conveys substance in descriptions and dialogue.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Jane Gardam is one of our finest novelists. Like Samuel Beckett, she explores the corrosive loneliness of being alive and the courage it takes to continue.”—The New Statesman

Jane Gardam
Jane Gardam has been twice awarded the Whitbread Prize and was also a Booker prize finalist. She is winner of the David Higham Prize, the Royal Society for Literature’s Winifred Holtby Prize, the Katherine Mansfield Prize, and the Silver Pen Award from PEN. Her novels include God on the Rocks, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Old Filth, finalist for the Orange Prize; The Man in the Wooden Hat, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Last Friends, finalist for the Folio Award. She lives in the south of England near the sea. In 1999 Jane Gardam was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in recognition of a distinguished literary career.

• Oct 1 2008
  Boston Globe: "Here is a writer who delivers the world we live in - the present world and the remembered world - with memorable and moving skill."
  
• Jul 18 2008
  Seattle Times: "Engrossing stories of hilarity and heartbreak."
  
• Jul 7 2008
  The Christian Science Monitor: "'The People on Privilege Hill' offers wise, mature, wry glimpses of an often unfathomable or vanishing, but invariably intriguing, world."
  
• Jul 7 2008
  Critical Mass: "Gardam , a much-decorated English author, is pure pleasure to read and ponder, with a voice that makes me think of a brilliant, tenderly funny, hyperobservant aunt who will you give the real skinny when no one else will."
  
• Jul 7 2008
  Jane Gardam in line for major short story prize
  
• Jun 30 2008
  Library Journal: "Gardam has created characters that are charming and touching and has edged them with her barbed humor."