#113 in Romance
Possession
- 528
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
- Booker Prize
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Our view
Byatt’s “Possession” mixes historical fiction with a story assembled from letters, diaries and other writings, and does so with evident learning. It won the Booker Prize in 1990. Some readers admire the craft yet feel that the many inserted texts leave the characters of the main plot underdeveloped. More than five hundred pages await a reader willing to follow her into scholarly byways.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Possession: A Romance is a 1990 best-selling novel by English writer A. S. Byatt that won the 1990 Booker Prize for Fiction. The novel explores the postmodern concerns of similar novels, which are often categorised as historiographic metafiction, a genre that blends approaches from both historical fiction and metafiction.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 133 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 48% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Romance average of 7.6. That is how 7.8 comes out. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.3 | 14 | 11% |
| Hardcover | 7.9 | 119 | 90% |
Frequently asked
How long is Possession?
It has 528 pages — longer than 77% of the ranked books in Romance.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Romance — with scores between 7.8 and 7.9, closest to this book.
