Ali Smith writes the fiction that we need. I last read her work in 2011, and though I regret not returning to her for so long, it has been quite amazing to experience the transformation between these novels. While her love for language and her reverence for knowledge and humanity have always shone through, her ability to stay so finely attuned to the wider world is, for me, her most remarkable talent.

There will be a great temptation to label this as a work of dystopian fiction. In my view, tagging Gliff as such diminishes the scope and intent of this brilliant work. We live in a rapidly changing world, and personal peace is so often reliant on accepting whatever circumstances surround us. In the days after finishing this book, I found myself looking at the world in sharper focus – not that I necessarily saw it anew, but that in reading Gliff, I was reminded of those feelings and convictions which I had begun to let go of. Though it may be set in the near future, there is nothing in this narrative that isn’t already happening somewhere in some similar way. Gliff is not really a dystopian vision of the future, it is a clear-sighted lens on the present.

There is a great deal of seriousness in this book, but its moments of humour, excitement and friendship are no less luminous for it. In fact, the dual existence of oppression and wonder is what makes each of those realities most real. This is a true novel of resistance – one that resets the creep of normalisation, and reminds us of the beauty that can exist in the world.