For Ali Smith, reading is so important and has shaped her in such a decisive way that this Wednesday afternoon she stated, in a packed Saló de Cent of Barcelona City Hall: "Books and libraries have a relationship and significance similar to what we humans have with water. I know that three-quarters of my body is water. I suspect that three-quarters of my body is also made of books".

Unlike some of the undisputed classics of dystopian literature, for example Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, who in a more or less defined and precise way show what the monstrously controlling societies that they literary in their new novel are like and how they function. Gliff, the British Ali Smith (1962) only shows it to us in a vague, partial way, based on a few significant details, creating a global drawing that tends to be abstract. He does this intentionally, of course, and this, let's say, deliberate imprecision has a frankly disturbing suggestive power in the best passages of the work. Overall, it deprives it of its symbolic and representative capacity, deactivating its expressive force and lowering its emotional and dramatic temperature.

Summer is coming to its final weeks and, with the change of season, so does the rentrée Literary. September is traditionally a month packed with new releases in the publishing market, many of which mark the start of the school year. We've selected the 25 most promising.