This extraordinary book justifies once again the statement John Barkham made when we published Miss Frame's first novel - Owls do Cry. "Janet Frame," wrote Mr. Barkham, "is the most talented writer to have come out of New Zealand since Katherine Mansfield." "Few novelists since Joyce," writes William Peden in the Saturday Review, "have so successfully portrayed the world of dreams and illusions. Throughout The Edge of the Alphabet, Miss Frame maintains a remarkable balance between the comic and the serious, the commonplace and the bizarre."