Facebook Twitter Pinterest <Embed>
FREE Delivery in the UK.
Temporarily out of stock.
Order now and we'll deliver when available. We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information. Your account will only be charged when we dispatch the item.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Dispatch to:
France - Mainland
To see addresses, please
Or
Please enter a valid UK postcode.
Or
FREE Delivery on orders over £10.
Used: Good | Details
Sold by Tree Savers
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: A used book that is in good, clean condition. Your item will be picked, packed and posted FREE to you within the UK by Amazon, also eligible for super saver delivery.

Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) is a service Amazon offers sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's warehouses, and Amazon directly does the picking, packing, shipping and customer service on these items. Something Amazon hopes you'll especially enjoy: FBA items are eligible for and for Amazon Prime just as if they were Amazon items.

If you're a seller, you can increase your sales significantly by using Fulfilment by Amazon. We invite you to learn more about this programme .

Have one to sell?
Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See this image

Ragnarok: the End of the Gods (Myths) Hardcover – 1 Sep 2011

by A. S. Byatt (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 40 customer reviews
See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price
New from Used from
Kindle Edition
"Please retry"
£4.53
— —
Hardcover
"Please retry"
£14.99
£3.25 £0.01
Paperback
"Please retry"
£6.20
£3.40 £4.28
Audio Download, Unabridged
"Please retry"
£0.00
Free with your Audible trial
Note: This item is eligible for click and collect. Details
Pick up your parcel at a time and place that suits you.
  • Choose from over 13,000 locations across the UK
  • Prime members get unlimited deliveries at no additional cost
How to order to an Amazon Pickup Location?
  1. Find your preferred location and add it to your address book
  2. Dispatch to this address when you check out
Learn more
Top Deals in Books
See the latest top deals in Books. Shop now
£14.99 FREE Delivery in the UK. Temporarily out of stock. Order now and we'll deliver when available. We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information. Your account will only be charged when we dispatch the item. Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Frequently Bought Together

  • Ragnarok: the End of the Gods (Myths)
  • +
  • The Gospel of Loki
Total price: £21.98
One of these items is dispatched sooner than the other. Show details
Buy the selected items together

Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.
Top Deals in Books
See the latest top deals in Books. Shop now

Product details

  • Hardcover: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd; First Edition edition (1 Sept. 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1847670644
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847670649
  • Product Dimensions: 14.6 x 2.1 x 21.9 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 432,865 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

Byatt peels back the cover of the book that the girl reads and takes us deep inside it as she delights in reimagining the twilight of the gods and the destruction of the world. ... Like Wagner before her, [she] dares to dream how the world might end ... this rewriting of the Ragnarok is a story for our time of overpopulation and anthropomorphic climate change, and of all time. --Financial Times

Surely among the most beautiful and incisive [pages] Byatt has ever written. --Independent

Byatt's retelling of Ragnarok is permeated with the loving familiarity of long acquaintance. Her language is lapidary. The terrible archness that can infest the narratives of sophisticated writers who attempt to master myth is resoundingly absent ... It is pleasant to imagine some lonely, bookish child discovering it and becoming entranced. --Evening Standard

A brilliant, highly intelligent, fiercely personal rendition of the Scandinavian mythology...a gorgeous enrichment and interpretation. --Ursula K. Le Guin, Literary Review

Byatt's writing, impassioned and liberated from the strictures of the novel, has never been so beautiful. --Telegraph

Byatt's prose is majestic, the lush descriptive passages - jewelled one minute, gory the next - a pleasure to get lost in. --Sunday Telegraph

Byatt paints beautiful and fantastic word-pictures, glittering verbal special effects. --Scotsman

Colour and sensation flood Byatt's writing . . . One of the most brilliant minds and speakers of our generation. --Independent

Byatt's prose, compact and lyrical, treats [the gods] with dignity...Ragnarok is a clever, lucid, lovely book. --Guardian

Thanks to a rare fusion of imagination and intellect, sensual poetry and cerebral prose, youthful joy and elderly wisdom [,Byatt has made]...an entire world, compressed but energetically alive in all its details. When we have artists like this, who needs gods? --Observer

Energy and power drip from Byatt's writing ... There are too many glittering sentences to quote here in full.
--New Humanist

Book Description

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession and The Children's Book comes an extraordinary tale, inspired by the myth of Ragnarok. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Product Description

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA myth for today
By Annie Nicol on 29 Jan. 2012
Format: Hardcover
This is a powerful re-telling of an ancient myth through the eyes and mind of a child reading about the Norse gods during the Second World War. The child, evacuated to the countryside, roams in woods and fields and takes delight in the beauty of the natural world. She gathers armfuls of flowers, knowing there will always be more to replace them. She visualizes the bombing raids over London as the Wild Hunt of Woden.

The book does not speak directly of our current environmental crisis, and yet there is an underlying feeling throughout that this is a myth for our time. It tells of a world that was created, that was abundant and full of life, and then was destroyed. Already the English landscape we inhabit is very different to that of the 1940s and immeasurably less diverse. This ancient myth offers no solutions, only warning - and what a terrifying end of the world it shows, as the people wait for a spring that never comes, wolves swallow the moon and sun, and the stars fall "like spent candles" from the sky.
Comment 13 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsA beautiful retelling
By Nicki J on 10 Aug. 2011
Format: Kindle Edition
When I first saw this title was available on NetGalley, I was so excited and requested it at once. I've loved everything I've read by Byatt and this story was of particular interest to me as I adore mythology.

I devoured this book in one sitting and loved every minute of it. The story of Ragnarok is told here as seen through the eyes of a young girl, reading the mythology from a book while she lives in the country during the war. I loved the way the child related the story to her own experiences of war and religion.

This book shifts between the child's thoughts and the Ragnarok story, but it never feels fragmented as Byatt manages to balance the two elements perfectly. The prose is beautiful and descriptive yet not overly 'flowery' and it is a real pleasure to read it and lose yourself in the words.

I enjoyed the note from Byatt at the end, discussing the approach she'd used, as that really helped bind the piece together.

It's been a while since I last did any reading on Northern myth, but I now feel inspired to grab up my copies of the Edda and the Kalevala again. This is definitely a book that I will be buying myself a print copy of so that I can keep it in my library and reread it in the future. Highly recommended to both lovers of literary fiction and those interested in mythology.

I received this book as a free ebook ARC from NetGalley.
1 Comment 43 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsWonderful introduction to Norse myth
By Curiosity Killed The Bookworm on 14 Aug. 2011
Format: Kindle Edition
Ragnarök is the latest edition to Canongate's excellent Myths series, all standalone novels by a variety of the world's finest writers. Written by A.S. Byatt of The Children's Book fame, it tells the Nordic story of the Judgement of the Gods or the end of the world.

Told through the eyes of a girl in wartime Britain, known only as the thin child, Ragnarök is a good introduction to Nordic myths. The thin child finds a book entitled Asgard and the Gods in the house she is evacuated to and she shares those myths with the reader. With her father fighting in the war, the thin girl is going through her very own Ragnarök, knowing that the end of her world must surely be coming.

The novel is not really about the thin girl though, it is more a collection of myths that lead up to Ragnarök. From the creation story of Yggdrasil, a great tree whose ecosystem was the world, to the tale of the great serpent Jörmungandr, who encircled the world. Like the thin child, Loki has always been my favourite player in the Nordic myths and this mischevious demi-god plays a big part in most of them.

Reading this, you will get the feeling of familiarity, even if you don't know the myths themselves. It really does emphasis that myths are borrowed and adapted throughout cultures. The Nordic Hel will have shaped the Christianity's Hell of eternal torment much more then the Greek underworld would have, where the Elysian fields were the reward of heroes.

The author's thoughts on myths are also included and are well worth a read. My copy (a proof not the Kindle edition) had place markers for the illustrations so I can't comment on those but am excited the see how it is illustrated. The bibliography is full of interesting titles if you wish to read more.
Comment 21 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsA compelling return to Norse myth for one of Britain's best writers
By Paul Bowes TOP 1000 REVIEWER on 14 April 2012
Format: Hardcover
'Ragnarok' is A. S. Byatt's retelling of the Norse myth of the ending of the world, which she first encountered as a child during the Second World War. The author has managed something very difficult here: she has told a story about one aspect of childhood - the mythic dimension of a child's burgeoning imagination - in an unsentimental way that makes sense to an adult without distorting the original experience. In addition, she has rescued an authentic northern European mythology from the Christianizing overcast that has concealed it in recent centuries, and has reconnected it to our own world of conflict, waste and environmental destruction without merely substituting one clumsy allegorical reading for another.

Byatt's prose here is plain and muscular, achieving many of its effects rhythmically and additively, respecting the strangeness of the myth and yet restoring a degree of accurate detail - particularly of the lives of living things - that gives the imagination purchase. The author's intelligence shines through at every point.

I greatly enjoyed this book. The only false step for me is in the concluding chapter, 'Thoughts On Myths', in which Byatt muses about the imaginative origins of the story and her own understanding of the nature and function of myth. For me this was an unnecessary glimpse behind the scenes, bringing much that is already clearly implicit in Byatt's telling too far into the light of day. I would strongly advise any reader who might be tempted to read that final chapter first, as a crib to the main text, to resist the temptation.
Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

A fantastic read.

Published 7 days ago by takerbobpooh
5.0 out of 5 starsA gift

A gift but enjoyed by recipient

Published 8 months ago by Norma
1.0 out of 5 starsDisappointing

Very disappointing.I have really enjoyed some of AS Byatt's books especially ''The Children's Book'' but though there was some
fine writing it was overdone very often and... Read more

Published 11 months ago by Fwat
4.0 out of 5 starsWild times among the Aesir

A presumably autobiographical account of A S Byatt's relationship with the Norse myths. The writing style is gorgeous, but another reason for the 4 stars is that I had exactly the... Read more

Published 12 months ago by D. Morris
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Best ficiton I've read in ages.

Published 13 months ago by meow
2.0 out of 5 starsTwo Stars

I found this hard to get into and didn't enjoy it. Simply personal preference though.

Published 15 months ago by Mrs E J English
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

thanks!

Published 16 months ago by annarose
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Excellent product

Published 16 months ago by Beth Ellin
4.0 out of 5 starsEcocritical reading of the end of the Gods

I picked this up after reading Byatt's Possession. This is a much smaller book and I read it in around an hour, so it's only a quick read. Read more

Published 17 months ago by V. G. Harwood
5.0 out of 5 starsAnother way to look at the 'Gods'

Love AS Byatt and has to read this straight after reading Possession.
This is, as all her writing is, a tour de force. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Peter Destrey

There's a problem loading this menu at the moment.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

Look for similar items by category

Feedback