The story of Ragnarok plays out the endgame of Norse mythology. It is a tale of the destruction of life on this planet and the end of the god themselves. What more relevant myth could any modern writer choose to retell? As the bombs rain down in the Battle of Britain, one young girl is evacuated to the countryside. she is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life. then she is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods – a book of ancient Norse myths – and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the impermanence of life itself are just some of the threads that A.S.Byatt weaves into The End of the Gods. just as Wagner borrowed from this dramatic and catasrophic Norse saga for the climax of his Ring Cycle, so AS Byatt reinvents it for our time in all its intensity and glory. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark piece of storytelling from one of the world’s greatest writers.