I know it in my ancient water, that something will happen today...

Today is the 75th birthday of identical twin sisters, Dora and Nora. And on this day their story begins, a richly comic tale of the tangled fortunes of two theatrical families, the Hazards and the Chances. It is in fact, the 23^rd April, Shakespeare's birthday and as Dora's story unfurls, over the course of a whole century, it is populated with as many sets of twins, mistaken identities and unlikely coincidences as any Shakespeare comedy.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITH

'It is wise, bawdy, vulgar, eloquent and very, very funny... And the writing is often breathtakingly lyrical... A masterpiece. Please share' Guardian

Angela Carter was born in 1940 and read English at Bristol University, before spending two years living in Japan. She lived and worked extensively in the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by the Magic Toyshop in 1967, which went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She wrote a further four novels, together with three collections of Short Stories, two works of non-fiction and a volume of collected writings. Angela Carter died in 1992.