Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth.

When, at sixteen, Janie is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams - who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds. Rediscovered and championed by Alice Walker in the 1970s, Hurston's lyrical novel of self-discovery is now acclaimed as one of the greatest American classics of the twentieth century.

INTRODUCED BY ZADIE SMITH

'There is no novel I love more' ZADIE SMITH

'This novel is a packet of surprises' GUARDIAN

'One of the greatest writers of our time' TONI MORRISON

'Zora Neale Hurston was a knockout' MAYA ANGELOU

'There is no book more important to me than this one. It speaks to me as no novel, past or present, has ever done.' ALICE WALKER