The World’s Wife

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What to expect

This unique collection of poems from the Poet Laureate, filled with her characteristic wit, is a feminist classic and a modern take on age-old mythology.

Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.
The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The Je t'adore.

Behind every famous man is a great woman – and from the quick-tongued Mrs Darwin to the lascivious Frau Freud, from the adoring Queen Kong to the long-suffering wife of the Devil himself, each one steps from her counterpart's shadow to tell her side of the story in this irresistible collection.

Original, subversive, full of imagination and quicksilver wit, The World's Wife is Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy at her beguiling best.

Critics Review

Poignant, thoughtful, funny, rich and accessible
Guardian
These thirty poems vibrate with intense colloquialisms, physicality, energy, freshness and cheek. Many of them are very funny... the best are inventive, subversive and written with great rhythmical and rhyming dash
Sunday Telegraph
Carol Ann Duffy is a poet of skill, talent and great heart
Erica Wagner
The World's Wife is a joyous exuberant book of poems about women usually excluded from myth and history
Guardian
Duffy takes a cheeky, subversive, no-nonsense swipe with a dish clout at the famous men of history and myth. They don't have a chance in hell of dodging her quick-witted wallop as she relays their stories from their spouse's points of view
The Times
It sparkes with wit, intelligence and an impressive lightness of touch, while drawing on some weighty emotional experiences: loneliness, jealousy, self-loathing, desire, the fierceness of a mother's love
Independent
She reveals the foibles of the great, the ghastly and the ordinary bloke and the sufferings of those closest to them. The result is a melange of history lesson, fairy-tale and modern-day domestic tragedy, with the occasional joke thrown in for good measure. . . Duffy's poetics are flawless - she never misses a beat, her pace is exhilarating, and her language is original and exciting
Scotsman
This book is going to be a hit, and can only consolidate Duffy's position as one of the most widely read British poets of her generation
Herald

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