A S Byatt's fairy tales and fables are among the best-loved features of her fiction. Innumerable listeners have asked for the two marvellous fairy tales in Possession - 'The Glass Coffin' and 'Gode's Tale' of the Breton Naie des Trepasses - to be published separately.

Here they take their place with three other stories with medieval and oriental settings.

The title story, The Djinn and the Nightingale's Eye, a long story about an Englishwoman in Turkey who unwittingly releases a genie from his bottle, is a reflection on women's lives, on magic and on the power of story-telling itself.