A triangle can have more than three sides.

When Katia leaves her native Poland for the more permissive world of 60s London, she finds herself trying to cope with situations she had never dreamed of: a dreary job on a women’s magazine, a solitary friendship with an embittered homosexual and a strange relationship with Harry and Don, old friends who are yet entirely different from each other. Peculiarly attracted to both, Katia tries to sort out her tangled emotions and arrange her life in a way that will satisfy two men at once. Capturing perfectly the feel and flavour of its time, A State of Change is an absolute gem by one of the most underrated writers of her generation.

‘A very good novel’ Evening Standard

‘Extraordinarily rewarding … marvellously well written.’ The Listener.

Penelope Gilliatt - Born in 1932, Penelope Gilliatt was an English novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and film critic. She is perhaps best known for writing the screenplay for Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971) and she wrote several other novels, including One by One (1965). Her short stories were collected in Nobody's Business (1972). As a film critic, Gilliatt wrote numerous reviews for The Observer before she began a column that ran for years in The New Yorker, in which she alternated for six month intervals with Pauline Kael as chief film reviewer. She was married to playwright John Osborne from 1963-1968, giving him his only natural child — a daughter, Nolan. She died in 1993.

Ali Smith - Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. Her first book, Free Love, won the Saltire First Book Award. She is also the author of Like; Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World and The Accidental, which won the 2003 Whitbread novel award.

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