TRANSLATION RIGHTS GUIDE
LONDON BOOK FAIR 2017
Angela Rose, Rights Director
Direct Line: +44 (0)20 7605 1369
Email: [email protected]
Helen James, Rights Executive and Contracts Manager
Direct Line +44 (0)20 7605 1394
Email: [email protected]
1
GRANTA BOOKS
Diana Athill
Patrick Barkham
Madeleine Bunting
Austin Duffy
Lorna Gibb
Caspar Henderson
Victoria Moore
Mark Rowlands
A FLORENCE DIARY
ISLANDER
LOVE OF COUNTRY
THIS LIVING AND IMMORTAL THING
A GHOST’S STORY
A NEW MAP OF WONDERS
THE WINE DINE DICTIONARY
A GOOD LIFE
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
GRANTA MAGAZINE
international editions
11
DO IT LIKE A WOMAN
AFTERSHOCK
THE SAFFRON ROAD
KING KONG
12
13
14
15
PORTOBELLO BOOKS
Caroline Criado-Perez
Matthew Green
Christine Toomey
Pat Williams
SELECTED BACKLIST
16
2
A FLORENCE DIARY
Diana Athill
A recently discovered gem from the bestselling author of Somewhere Towards the End and
Alive, Alive Oh! the charming and vivacious diary of Diana Athill’s holiday to Florence in the late
1940s.
In August 1947, Diana Athill travelled to Florence by the Golden Arrow train for a two-week holiday
with her good friend Pen. In this playful diary of that trip, Athill recorded her observations and
adventures – eating with (and paid for by) the hopeful men they meet on their travels, admiring
architectural sights, sampling delicious pastries, eking out their budget and getting into
scrapes. Written with an arresting immediacy and infused with an exhilarating joie de vivre, A
Florence Diary is a bright, colourful evocation of a time long lost, and a vibrant portrait of a city that
will be deliciously familiar to any contemporary traveller.
Diana Athill was born in 1917. She helped André Deutsch establish the publishing company that
bore his name and worked as an editor for Deutsch for four decades. Athill’s distinguished career as
an editor is the subject of her acclaimed memoir Stet, which is also published by Granta Books, as
are six further volumes of memoirs: Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make
Believe, Somewhere Towards the End and Alive, Alive Oh!; a novel, Don’t Look at Me Like That, and a
collection of letters, Instead of a Book. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for
Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE. She lives in London.
November 2016 ∙ Memoir / Travel ∙ 64pp
Rights sold: North America (Anansi), Italy (Bompiani)
***
ALSO AVAILABLE:
ALIVE, ALIVE OH!
‘An extraordinary guiding intelligence – sceptical, amused, humane’ New Statesman
Published (December 2015) ∙ Memoir ∙ 144pp
Rights sold: US (WW Norton), Italy (Bompiani), Audio (Audible), Large print (WF Howes)
3
ISLANDER
A Journey around our Archipelago
Patrick Barkham
A funny, curious and surprising book about the islands of Britain and their human history, ranging
from the Neolithic to the present day, from the bestselling author of The Butterfly Isles.
The people of the British Isles are an island race. We are distributed across two large islands but also
across an archipelago of 6,289 smaller ones. Some, like the Isle of Man, are like miniature nations,
with their own language and tax laws; others, like Samson in the Isles of Scilly, are abandoned and
mysterious places haunted by myths, old curses and rats. There are islands like Easedale, once
famed for its slate mines, which house tiny, tight-knit communities; then there are islands like
Brownsman in the Farne Islands, which are strictly for the birds - literally, as a sanctuary for seabirds.
Our islands are places of refuge, places of isolation, party retreats and oases of peace. They entice,
unnerve and delight us, but what it is about islands that make their allure so irresistible?
In this evocative and fascinating book, Patrick Barkham explores the essence of islands and island
living: how do societies work differently on small islands, and do islands change the way we behave?
Are eccentrics attracted to islands, or do islands make people eccentric? Do they keep us sane or
drive us mad? Patrick’s journey across the British Isles’ isles sets out to answer these questions.
Along the way, he uncovers bizarre and touching stories about island life, meets a host of curious
characters, and sees some of the most beautiful landscapes in Britain.
Patrick Barkham was born in 1975 in Norfolk and was educated at Cambridge University. He is a
features writer for the Guardian, where he has reported on everything from the Iraq War to climate
change. He is the author of The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals,
Badgerlands: The Twilight World of Britain’s Most Enigmatic Animal and Coastlines: The Story of Our
Shore. He lives in Norfolk.
October 2017 ∙ Travel writing ∙ 288pp
4
LOVE OF COUNTRY
A Hebridean Journey
Madeleine Bunting
‘A heroic journey that takes us as far into the regions of the heart as into the islands of the northwest’ Richard Holloway
Few landscapes are as iconic as the islands off the north-western Scottish coast. On the outer edge of
the British Isles and facing the Atlantic Ocean, the Hebrides form part of Europe’s boundary. Because
of their unique position in the Atlantic archipelago, they have been at the centre of a network of
ancient shipping routes which has led to a remarkable history of cultures colliding and merging. Home
to a long and rich Gaelic tradition, for centuries their astonishing geography has attracted saints and
sinners, stimulated artists and writers, inspiring awe and dread as well as deep attachment.
Over six years, Madeleine Bunting travelled north-west, returning again and again to the
Hebrides, exploring their landscapes, histories and magnetic pull. With great sensitivity and
perceptiveness, she delves into the meanings of home and belonging, which in these islands have been
fraught with tragedy as well as tenacious resistance.
The Hebrides hold a remarkable place in the imaginations of Scotland and England. Bunting considers
the extent of the islands’ influence beyond their shores, finding that their history of dispossession and
migration has been central to the British imperial past. Perhaps more significant still is how their
landscapes have been repeatedly used to imagine the British nation. Love of Country shows how their
history is a backdrop for contemporary debates about the relationship between our nations, how
Britain was created, and what Britain has meant – for good and for ill.
Madeleine Bunting was for many years a columnist for the Guardian, which she joined in 1990. Born in
North Yorkshire, Bunting read History at Cambridge and Politics at Harvard. She is the author of The
Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule, 1940-45, Willing Slaves: How the
Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives (both published by HarperCollins) and The Plot: A Biography of an
English Acre (published by Granta in 2009) which won the Portico Prize and was shortlisted for the
Ondaatje Prize. She left the Guardian in 2013 to concentrate on her writing. She lives in London with
her family.
October 2016 ∙ Non-fiction ∙ 368pp
Rights sold: US (University of Chicago Press)
5
THIS LIVING AND
IMMORTAL THING
Austin Duffy
Shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2016
Shortlisted for the Irish Book Award (Newcomer) 2016
‘A tremendous, strange and beguiling novel that has a bearing on all our lives. Droll, disturbing
and surreptitiously profound’ William Boyd
‘An immortal, indeed, and yet strange thing: in his unshrinking examination of bodily death and
spirits in limbo, Austin Duffy has created a miraculously life-affirming novel’ Gavin Corbett
‘My life is in your hands, doctor, they would sometimes say, which it never was...’
This Living and Immortal Thing inhabits a world of medicine, research, cancer and death. Its
disillusioned and darkly funny narrator is an Irish oncologist, who is searching for a scientific
breakthrough in the lab of a New York hospital while struggling with his failing marriage and his
growing alienation within the city’s urban spaces. Tending to the health of his laboratory mice, he
finds comfort in work that is measurable, results that are quantifiable.
But life is every bit as persistent as the illness he studies. As he starts a new treatment on his mice,
he meets a beautiful but elusive Russian translator at the hospital, his estranged wife begins to call,
his neighbours are acting strangely and his supervisor pressures him to push ahead professionally.
And always there is the pull of family; of the place he considers home.
Shot through with Duffy’s haunting, beautiful descriptions of the science underlying cancer, which
starkly illustrate the paradox of an illness at whose heart is a persistent and deadly life force, This
Living and Immortal Thing shows how the cruelty of the disease is a price we pay for the joy and
complexity of being in the world.
Austin Duffy grew up in Ireland and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin. He is a practising
medical oncologist at the National Cancer Institute in Washington DC, where he now lives with his
wife and son. In 2011, Duffy was awarded RTE’s Francis MacManus award for his short story ‘Orca’.
This Living and Immortal Thing is his first novel.
Published (February 2016) ∙ Fiction ∙ 304pp
6
A GHOST’S STORY
Lorna Gibb
‘In this her first novel, Lorna Gibb skilfully blends research and fact with fiction to create a unique
perspective. Criss-crossing continents, moving back and forth through time, A Ghost’s Story gives
life to a voice that is at once compelling, fresh, surprisingly honest and funny, and above all,
relentlessly intriguing’ Judith Kinghorn, author of The Last Summer
‘This intriguing novel teasingly moves between truth and fiction with all the inventiveness and
unpredictability of the mediums, frauds, and spirits who crowd its pages. The dazzling succession
of extraordinary characters and bizarre happenings leaves the reader as puzzled as the dogged
Victorian investigators of the “spirit world” – but much better entertained. For as well as being
both horrifying and funny by turns, the novel becomes a touching love-story of the most unusual
kind’ Charles Palliser, author of The Quincunx
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries séances and spiritualist meetings grew in popularity. One
‘ghost’ appeared more than any other, the Katie King spirit.
A Ghost’s Story presents the mysterious spirit writings and biographical outpourings of Katie King,
this famous and enigmatic spirit celebrity. A profound and curious consciousness guided into this
realm by the faith of true believers, or the cheap trickery of parlour cheats and exploitative
swindlers? Katie King is both, and more. This is the tale of a ghost’s quest to understand human
faith, loss and passion. It is also the tale of a contemporary scholar desperate to understand the
allure of the spirit world, journeying with Katie from the candle-lit drawing rooms of Victorian
London to the Imperial Palaces of Tsars; from the shadiest of gimmicks and tricks, to the most
poignant sincerity of the death-bed wish.
A Ghost’s Story announces a narrator like no other, moving in and out of time and space,
obstreperous, witty and profoundly honest. Above all, it is an examination of belief and a spectacular
insight into what lies on the other side.
Lorna Gibb was born in Belshill, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. She is a university lecturer and now
lives in London. She is the author of Lady Hester: Queen of the East and West’s World: The
Extraordinary Life of Dame Rebecca West. A Ghost’s Story is her first novel.
Published (November 2015) ∙ Fiction ∙ 336pp
7
A NEW MAP OF WONDERS
A Journey in Search of Modern Marvels
Caspar Henderson
A rich and mesmerising investigation of wonder: what it is, why it
matters, how to cultivate it, how it has changed over time and what
the future of wonderment might be.
From divine visions seen in whirlwinds and burning bushes, to the
Romantic Era’s fascination with the wilds of nature, our sense of wonder has long served as a
starting point for experiencing the world. Beautiful, strangely essential, and for a good part of
history, often inexplicable, these encounters with wonder have drawn us deeper into the mystery of
what it means to be alive, and to confront our collective challenges. But today, in our rapidly
accelerating culture, this intuitive celebration of wonder can pass by unnoticed. What might be lost
when we overlook wonder in all its daily guises? And how might we cultivate a sense of wonder that
is fit for our technologically-advanced time?
Charting these emerging territories with the curiosity and enthusiasm of some of our great
explorers, Caspar Henderson’s A New Map of Wonders sets out to answer these questions. Starting
with our constant struggle to comprehend the cosmos and the wonder of life, before delving into
the internal complexities of the body, our mind and our emotions, the book takes us on a personal
journey through the transcendent moments we all experience, but seldom reflect upon. At stake
here is not just the unpredictable beauty of the everyday, but the promise of a better future for
humanity itself.
Caspar Henderson has been a journalist and an editor with various publications and broadcasters.
He is a past recipient of an IUCN-Reuters Award for best environmental reporting in Western
Europe. His debut, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings (Granta, 2012), won the Roger Deakin Award
of the Society of Authors and the Jerwood Award of the Royal Society of Literature, and was
shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science.
November 2017 ∙ Non-fiction ∙ 364pp
Rights sold: US (University of Chicago Press)
ALSO AVAILABLE: THE BOOK OF BARELY IMAGINED BEINGS: A 21ST CENTURY BESTIARY
‘The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is one that Pliny would have envied, Darwin applauded, and
Borges relished ... In these days of doom and gloom, I can think of nothing more rejoicing than
Caspar Henderson’s magical book’ Alberto Manguel
Rights sold: US (University of Chicago Press), Germany (Matthes & Seitz Berlin), France (Les Belles
Lettres), Korea (EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co), Russia (Alpina Publisher), Estonia (AS Äripäev),
Japan (X-Knowledge), Taiwan (Rye-Field), Norway (Forlaget Press), Italy (Adelphi), Poland
(Wydawnictwo Marginesy)
8
THE WINE DINE DICTIONARY
Good Food and Good Wine:
An A–Z of Suggestions for Happy
Eating and Drinking
Victoria Moore
International Wine Columnist of the Year and Online
Communicator of the Year at the 2015 Louis Roederer
International Wine Writers’ Awards
‘Full of valuable, well-founded information. Perfect!’ Michel Roux Jr.
‘How can you not love a book that recommends drinking a Rhône syrah with rillettes on one page
and Earl Grey tea or an Islay whisky with kippers on another page?’ Sybil Kapoor
‘A brilliant book: intelligent, accessible, and incredibly useful. This is my new “go to” bible for
planning a meal’ Diana Henry
‘I can’t think which is the better place to keep this book, in the kitchen or beside my bed, but either
way it’s an essential buy for any cook or wine-lover and a brilliant read’ Fiona Beckett
Here is the book that is currently missing from our kitchen shelves: a brilliantly intuitive handbook
for matching food and wine, from the author of the bestselling How to Drink.
Want to pick the perfect wine for dinner? Wondering what to eat with a special bottle? Let The Wine
Dine Dictionary be your guide. Arranged A-Z by food at one end and A-Z by wine at the other, this
unique handbook will help you make more informed, more creative, and more delicious choices
about what to eat and drink. It includes chapters on picking by mood, picking by place, wines that go
with (almost) everything and ‘game-changer’ ingredients like goats’ cheese, chilli and lemon.
As one of the country’s most popular and influential wine journalists, as well as an expert in the
psychology of smell and taste, Victoria Moore doesn’t just explain what goes with what, but why and
how the combination works, too. Written with her trademark authority, warmth and wit, this is a
book to consult and to savour.
Victoria Moore is an award-winning wine writer and currently writes a weekly drink column for
the Telegraph. She has written on wine for the New Statesman and the Guardian and has appeared
on Radio 4’s Food Programme and You & Yours. She is the author of How To Drink, also published by
Granta Books. She lives in London.
May 2017 ∙ Food / Drink ∙ 400pp
Rights sold: Holland (Atlas-Contact)
9
A GOOD LIFE
Philosophy from Cradle to Grave
Mark Rowlands
From the bestselling author of The Philosopher and the Wolf comes a gripping and provocative story
of one man’s life through a philosophical lens.
Myshkin was born on a certain day and died on a certain day – and some things happened to him in
between. These things presented him with ethical questions and this book is a record of his attempt
to answer those questions. Discovered by his son after Myshkin’s death, A Good Life is one man’s
reckoning with the life he has led and the choices he made. It is at once a philosophical handbook for
living and a page-turning narrative.
A Good Life is one man’s life (birth, death, education, religion, morality, illness and so on) told
through a philosophical lens. It is a riveting examination of the ethical questions we face, and the
decisions we must make, and a defence of the idea that at the beating heart of morality we find
love. And it is written with the conviction that, on their own, moral rules and principles are childish
things – risible and easily refuted. It is only a life in its entirety that can be morally judged.
A Good Life is sometimes profoundly funny, sometimes deeply serious. It is as readable as a novel
and as provocative as the best philosophy. It is the finest work to date by a charming and brilliant
thinker.
Mark Rowlands was born in Newport, Wales. He is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Miami and the author of sixteen books, including the bestselling The Philosopher and the Wolf, also
published by Granta. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Published (November 2015) ∙ Philosophy ∙ 304pp
Rights sold: Korea (Chungrim), Greece (Ekdoseis), Audio (Audible)
10
GRANTA MAGAZINE
Sigrid Rausing (editor)
From Nobel laureates to debut novelists, international translations to investigative journalism, each
themed issue of Granta turns the attention of the world’s best writers on to one aspect of the way
we live now. Granta does not have a political or literary manifesto, but it does have a belief in the
power and urgency of the story and its supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real.
Granta magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, a
periodical of student politics, badinage and literary enterprise, named after the river that runs
through the town. In this original incarnation it published the work writers like A.A. Milne, Michael
Frayn, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. As the Observer writes: ‘In its blend of memoirs
and photojournalism, and in its championing of contemporary realist fiction, Granta has its face
pressed firmly against the window, determined to witness the world.’
Now the English language edition of Granta is published quarterly – in print and ebook formats – and
we are delighted to announce a growing roster of partnerships with publishers worldwide, all of
whom publish their own editions of Granta, combining material from the English language edition
with local material of their own choosing.
Rights sold: Sweden (Bonniers), Brazil (Objetiva), Italy (Rizzoli), China (Shanghai 99), Japan (Waseda
Bungaku), Finland (Otava), Israel (Sipur Pashut), Spain (Galaxia Gutenberg), Portugal (Tinta da
China), Bulgaria (Janet 45), Turkey (Can Yayinlari)
11
DO IT LIKE A WOMAN
...And Change the World
Caroline Criado-Perez
‘Like Sheryl Sandberg’s feminist handbook Lean In, but without the corporate focus, it’s an
inspiring read, celebrating game-changers across the globe’ Scotsman
‘[An] immersive piece of investigative journalism, strong on sound facts and figures, finding
interconnections and then leaving readers space to draw their own conclusions ... The pleasure of
Do It Like A Woman is that it’s about other women – their campaigns, their political interventions,
their stories. In a world overstuffed with tedious me-myself-and-I-as-hero-of-my-own-narrative
books, Criado-Perez has had the good sense to deliver an overview that grasps the essential
impetus of feminism – as collective, connective action by a diversity of women whose voices are
as brave and informed as Criado-Perez’s’ New Statesman
Every day, all over the world, women are making a positive difference to their lives and the lives of
the people in their communities. Most of these women are cut off from the rhetoric and theory of
Western feminism; many are active in deeply patriarchal and socially restrictive societies; some may
not even describe themselves as feminists. Nevertheless, these women are proving to themselves,
and to the world, that a powerful force for change can sometimes start with a single brave action.
In Do It Like A Woman, Caroline Criado-Perez, an outspoken activist and campaigner, uncovers these
stories and investigates what they mean for the feminist movement as a whole. She gathers
together stories from beatboxers in Malta and prostitutes in Merseyside to fighter pilots in
Afghanistan and doctors in Portugal, and shows how women are taking positive, practical steps to
challenge injustice or inequality, and change their world. While some of these stories (the Everyday
Sexism campaign and the trial of Pussy Riot) are already known, the majority of the stories here have
not yet been told, and demand to be heard.
Caroline Criado-Perez is a British journalist and feminist activist whose work has appeared in The
Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent. She is one of the co-founders of The
Women’s Room, a website whose goal is to raise awareness of the marginalisation and
underrepresentation of women in the media. In 2013 she successfully campaigned for the inclusion
of a woman on the £10 note (after the Bank of England planned to replace Elizabeth Fry with
Winston Churchill). She tweets @CCriadoPerez. This is her first book.
Published (May 2015) ∙ Non-fiction ∙ 336pp
Rights sold: Audio (W F Howes)
12
AFTERSHOCK
Fighting War, Surviving Trauma
and Finding Peace
Matthew Green
‘Compelling, humbling and hugely inspiring accounts from the real heroes of our era. We have a
duty to understand what these men have given on our behalf’ Bear Grylls
‘This is a most compelling book which tells the story of those who have suffered so much in the
conduct of operation to protect our security. Mental health pressures need to move centre stage
in our priorities – now!’ Sir Richard Dannatt, former General Chief of Staff
‘If we expect our lives and freedoms to be protected we have a duty to those who do this. As a
society, as people, surely we must take responsibility for the bodies, minds, and indeed souls of
those who fight for us? Aftershock makes this point again and again, powerfully and
compellingly’ Justine Hardy, trauma therapist, author
Over the last decade, we have sent thousands of people to fight on our behalf. But what happens
when these soldiers come back home, having lost their friends and killed their enemies, having seen
and done things that have no place in civilian life? In Aftershock, Matthew Green tells the story of
our veterans’ journey from the frontline of combat to the reality of return.
Through wide-ranging interviews with former combatants – including a Royal Marine sniper and a
veteran operator in the SAS – as well as serving personnel and their families, physicians, therapists
and psychiatrists, Aftershock looks beyond the labels of shell shock and PTSD to get to the heart of
today’s post-conflict experience. It pursues the question that the military are so reluctant to ask:
why do people who are trained to thrive within the theatre of war so often find themselves illprepared for peace?
As a new generation of battle-scarred troops begins to lay their weapons down, Aftershock offers an
empathetic yet hard-hitting account of the hidden cost of conflict. And its message is one that has
profound implications, not just for the military, but for anyone with an interest in how we
experience trauma and survive.
For the past fourteen years, Matthew Green has worked as a correspondent for Reuters and
the Financial Times, reporting from over thirty countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan. His first
book, The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Joseph Kony, won a Jerwood Award and was longlisted for
the Orwell Prize. His writing has also appeared in the Economist, The Times and Esquire.
Published (October 2015) ∙ Non-fiction ∙ 336pp
www.matthewgreenjournalism.com
13
THE SAFFRON ROAD
A Journey with Buddha’s
Daughters
Christine Toomey
‘What a MARVELOUS JOURNEY shared with such sensitivity, eloquence, and heart! We meet
extraordinary women through Christine’s kindness and courage – it is a privilege to read and travel
with her. Everyone should try it – you will not be disappointed’ Professor Robert Tenzin Thurman,
author of Why the Dalai Lama Matters and Love Your Enemies
‘There are lessons for life on every step of The Saffron Road. Christine Toomey, long-time foreign
correspondent and truth-teller to the powerful, travels in search of women from the Buddhist
ways of dispassion, mindfulness and calm. She shows that philosophies are sometimes best
understood from a suitcase, writing as she learns and learning as she writes. Fortunate is the
reader who follows’ Peter Stothard
Every year, thousands of women choose to become Buddhist nuns. As they enter holy orders, they
become part of a long tradition of female spirituality that stretches back through the centuries and
now embraces the radical possibility that the next Dalai Lama could be a woman. In The Saffron
Road, award-winning reporter Christine Toomey follows in the footsteps of earlier generations of
nuns to trace the historical spread of the religion, from a solitary order in a remote area of India in
the 6th century BC to 1950s San Francisco, where the Beat Generation first popularised Zen
philosophy, to the globally-renowned practitioners of mindfulness of today. Beginning in the highest
reaches of the Himalayas, close to the birthplace of the Buddha, Toomey travels through Burma,
Tibet and Japan in the East, and then on to Europe and North America in the West, along the way
visiting contemporary nunneries to meet the women who practise there. As she talks to ‘kung fu’
nuns in Kathmandu and Zen priests in New Mexico, Toomey reveals the daily reality of the Buddhist
existence and learns more about the diverse spiritual paths leading these women towards nirvana.
Combining travelogue, history and first person interviews, The Saffron Road will open the door on
the rarely glimpsed world of ritual and discipline, reflection and enlightenment.
Christine Toomey has been a foreign correspondent and feature writer for The Sunday Times for
more than 20 years, reporting extensively from Latin America, the Middle East and throughout
Europe. She has received several prizes for her journalism, including two Amnesty International
Magazine Story of the Year awards.
Published (June 2015) ∙ Non-fiction ∙ 384pp
Rights sold: US (The Experiment)
14
KING KONG
Our Knot of Time and Music
Pat Williams
A unique perspective on apartheid-era South Africa and a touching, witty, moving read.
On 2nd February 1959, a musical about the life and times of heavyweight boxing star Ezekiel Dlamini
(known as ‘King Kong’) opened in Johannesburg to a packed audience that included Nelson Mandela.
King Kong was not just South Africa’s first ever musical, but one that grew out of a collaboration
between black people and white, and showcased an all black cast. It was an instant hit, bursting
through the barriers of apartheid and eventually playing to 200,000 South Africans of every colour
before transferring to London’s West End.
Pat Williams, the show’s lyricist, was at the time an apolitical young woman trying to free herself
from the controls and prejudices of the genteel white society in which she lived. Here she recounts
her experience of growing up in a divided South Africa, her involvement in the musical, and its
lasting impact both on herself and on the show’s cast, many of whom went on to find international
fame. Her memoir takes the story up to the present, and is not only a vivid evocation of a troubled
time and place, but also a celebration of a joyous production, in which a group of young people
came together in South Africa’s dark times – to create a show which still lives on today.
Pat Williams, who began her working life at sixteen, is an award-winning writer, journalist, scriptwriter and broadcaster, as well as a psychotherapist. She loves stories, spent ten years as director of
the College of Storytellers (formed to help kickstart the British storytelling revival), and gives popular
workshops and seminars on metaphor and therapeutic storytelling in Britain and elsewhere. Pat has
lived in London for decades, as well as, in recent years, on the Isle of Arran.
July 2017 ∙ Non-fiction ∙ 296pp
15
BACKLIST HIGHLIGHTS
STET: An Editor’s Life by Diana Athill
Widely regarded as one of the best publisher/editors in London, Diana Athill helped over almost five
decades to shape some of the finest books in modern literature. Together with André Deutsch she
established the publishing house that bore his name, where she worked until her retirement in 1985.
She edited (and nursed, and coerced, and coaxed) some of the most celebrated writers in the English
language, including V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys and Brian Moore.
This is a book about books, about the people who write them and the process of making them; in it,
a world dissected from the inside with a sharp and irresistible honesty.
Diana Athill was born in 1917. She helped André Deutsch establish the publishing company that
bore his name and worked as an editor for Deutsch for four decades. Athill’s distinguished career as
an editor is the subject of her acclaimed memoir Stet, which is also published by Granta Books, as
are five further volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make
Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, a novel, Don’t Look at Me Like That, and a collection of letters,
Instead of a Book. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the
End, and was presented with an OBE. She lives in London.
Rights sold: US (Grove/Atlantic), Korea (The Open Books Company), Spain (Trama Editorial)
THE BOOK OF DEAD PHILOSOPHERS by Simon Critchley
‘This ingenious primer collects potted biographies of 190 dead philosophers, then attempts to
extrapolate their views from the manner of their passing. It’s packed with great stories’ Time Out
Socrates said that ‘the true philosopher makes dying their profession.’ For philosophers down the
ages, an obsession with death has been almost a professional requirement. This book is unique in
that it not only looks at what philosophers have said about death, it also looks at their own manner
of dying.
The history of philosophers’ deaths as revealed in these pages contains tales of weirdness, madness,
suicide, murder, bad luck, pathos, and some dark humour: Plato died of a lice infestation; Diogenes
died by holding his breath; Thomas More was beheaded; Diderot choked to death on a strawberry;
Nietzsche made a long, soft-brained and dribbling descent into oblivion after kissing a horse in Turin;
Roland Barthes was hit by a laundry truck.
From the self-mocking haikus of the Zen masters to the last words of Christian saints and modernday sages, this book contains much to inspire both amusement and reflection. As Critchley brilliantly
demonstrates, looking closely at what great thinkers have said about death in the course of over two
thousand years in fact turns out to be a life-affirming enquiry into the meaning and possibility of
human happiness.
Simon Critchley has published books on a wide expanse of ethical and philosophical subjects,
including the bestselling The Book of Dead Philosophers, and cult novel Memory Theatre. He is Hans
Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, and series
moderator of ‘The Stone’, a philosophy column in The New York Times.
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Rights sold: US (Vintage), Spain (Santillana), Italy (Garzanti), Greece (Patakis), Brazil (Nova
Fronteira), Japan (Kawade), Turkey (BilgeSu), Holland (Scriptum Publishers), Korea (Imago), Croatia
(Naklada Ljevak), Poland (Farbiarnia), France (Bourin Éditeur), China – simple characters (Shanghai
Sanhui), Slovenia (Penca in Drugi), Serbia (Gradac Publishing House), Ripol (Russia), Denmark
(Turbine / KLIM)
100 HIEROGLYPHS: Think Like an Egyptian by Barry Kemp
‘Barry Kemp’s book is a capsule key to the ancient Egyptian mind’ The Times
Ancient Egyptian culture is separated from us by 5000 years; perhaps the greatest insights into the
Egyptian mind come from Egyptian hieroglyphs. They reveal the priorities, concerns and beliefs of
the Ancient Egyptians – a whole worldview.
Unlike the western alphabet, which is an arbitrary set of symbols not anchored in reality, each
Egyptian hieroglyph visually denotes a concept central to Egyptian thinking. The language and its
written form is intimately bound up with the imaginative world of the Egyptians. 100 Hieroglyphs
can be read in its entirety as an in-depth picture of Egyptian culture, or, as each entry stands alone,
dipped into at random. This fascinating book helps us to ‘think like an Egyptian’ and comprehend a
long vanished world.
Barry Kemp is Reader in Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. For many years he has directed
excavations and survey at Tell el-Amarna. His previous books include Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a
Civilisation.
Rights sold: US (Penguin/Plume), Sweden (Norstedts), Spain (Crítica), Hungary (Corvina), Korea
(Golden Owl Publishing)
CONVICTIONS: My Life with a Good Communist by Jo Langer
‘Impassioned, intimate and fiercely intelligent, Convictions gives us renewed insight into the
terrible costs of political repression for individual lives. Jo Langer’s memoir is a deeply affecting
story of a marriage marred by ideological fervor, an act of historical witnessing, and an example of
true moral resistance’ Eva Hoffmann
Jo Langer was an idealistic teenager in 1940s Hungary when she began a correspondence course in
Marxism. Her tutor was Oskar Langer, a committed young communist from the former
Czechoslovakia. They eventually met and married, and Jo left her bourgeois upbringing behind to
become part of the new Socialist future in Bratislava. But when Oskar, a respected economist and
party-member, was arrested and imprisoned, Jo was immediately stripped of her home and her job.
She spent the next ten years eking out a life for herself and her two daughters in near-impossible
conditions. Convictions is Jo’s compelling memoir of that time, told without sensationalism, but with
candour and wit. It is the story of an immensely courageous, resourceful young woman, a portrait of
a marriage, and a tale of survival in a totalitarian state. At its heart it is a demand for people to come
before politics, and a protest against the terrible human consequences of unquestioning convictions
and blind faith.
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Jo Langer was born in Budapest in 1912. In 1934 she married a young communist militant, Oskar
Langer, and they moved to his homeland, Czechoslovakia. In 1938 they escaped the Holocaust by
emigrating to the US, returning to their home in Czechoslovakia after the war. Oskar Langer was
arrested and imprisoned in 1951, and died not long after his release ten years later. After the Soviet
invasion in 1968, Jo Langer emigrated with her family once more, this time to Sweden. She died in
1990.
Rights sold: Belarus (Civic Belarus), Sweden (Ruin)
A BOOK OF SILENCE by Sara Maitland
‘Sara Maitland has scaled the heights (or is it depths?) of what might be the only frontier
humankind will never conquer and cannot, in spite of itself, destroy – silence…It’s difficult to
convey the thrill of A Book of Silence, an adventure story that doesn’t involve roaring crowds or
screaming headlines, doesn’t depict a heroine climbing high mountains or sailing vast oceans,
doesn’t chronicle racing pulses or sweaty palms, and yet is every bit as awe-inspiring, deathdefying and mind-blowing as any trip up Everest. Rarely have I been so amazed at the splendor of
a new landscape unfolding before my eyes, and felt so tense wondering what was going to happen
as this intrepid writer pushed her way across the pages’ New York Times Book Review
After a noisy upbringing as one of six children, and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara
Maitland began to crave silence. Over the past five years, she has spent periods of silence in the
Sinai desert, the Australian bush, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Her memoir of these
experiences is interwoven with the history of silence through fairy-tale and myth, Western and
Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards
silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway,
and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home. A Book of
Silence is a deeply thoughtful, honest and illuminating memoir about a phenomenon too often
neglected in the contemporary world.
Rights sold: US (Counterpoint), Spain (Alba), Estonia (Eesti Päevaleht), Denmark (Pressto), Croatia
(Planetopija), Italy (Cairo Editore), Holland (Scriptum), China – simple characters (Changjiang
Literature & Art Publishing House), Sweden (Cordia), Portugal (Estrela Polar), Germany (Edition
Steinrich), Lithuania (Tyto alba), Korea (Madibooks)
BLUEBIRD: A Memoir by Vesna Maric
‘Her confident, beguiling voice, her refusal to be pitied or patronised, reminds us that young
people caught up in war have their own perspectives, their own stories to tell. I’m sure it is a
voice we will hear more of in the future’ Guardian
Vesna Maric left Bosnia the beginning of the war, at the age of sixteen, on a convoy of coaches of
women and children heading for the north-west of England. Bluebird is her funny, vivid and
immensely readable memoir of the experience. She describes the beginning of the war – the
machine gun fire that sounded like a sewing machine in the distance – and her family’s growing
anxiety, culminating in the decision to send her and her sister to Britain.
Maric is sharp and revealing on the presumptions the local volunteers make about how refugees
should behave, and the refugees’ own resistance to the role. Throughout she interweaves the stories
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of other refugees – love stories, stories of escape, stories about the strange clash between refugees
and their hosts. Maric attracts touching and absurd stories like a magnet. In the intensely moving
ending she describes her return to Bosnia years later, walking through the ruined streets of her
town, and then realising her old slippers, still by her bed, no longer fit.
Unlike many books on Bosnia, and refugees in general, Bluebird is never self-pitying, never grave. It’s
refreshing to read an account of these experiences filtered through the eyes of a teenager with
attitude – written with brilliant comic timing, and a great storytelling gift.
Vesna Maric was born in Mostar in 1976. At 16, she left Bosnia-Herzegovina on a convoy of Bosnian
refugees heading to the Lake District, later moving to Hull and Exeter, and studying Czech Literature
at SSEES, London. She went on to work for the BBC World Service and now writes Lonely Planet
travel guides and a variety of journalism. She lives in Madrid.
Rights sold: Holland (Arena), US (Soft Skull), Spain (Ediciones Ikusager), India (Marathi – Mehta
Publishing House)
WHAT DO WE BELIEVE? by Tony Morris (Series Editor)
What Do We Believe? introduces different beliefs from across the world in lively, accessible and
intelligent short books.
This series veers away from the more indgestible history and theory, and instead focuses on the way
believers interpret the doctrines they follow, and how these beliefs influence their lives. Within each
belief system, from the religious to the ideological, there are nuances and interesting debates about
the best way to understand the original doctrines.
What Do We Believe? does not preach to convert, but instead offers an insider’s perception with
critically informed insights for the general reader. Each title is written by an adherent to the
tradition, well established in their field, who maintains a critical stance.
At around 100pp, What Do We Believe? are easy to read quickly. They will appeal particularly to
readers who want a lively introduction to the many belief systems of the world, and want to
understand why a belief system is worth thinking about without having to digest the often lengthy
literature associated with it.
What Do Christians Believe? Malcolm Guite; What Do Muslims Believe? Zia Sardar; What Do
Buddhists Believe? Tony Morris; What Do Druids Believe? Philip Carr-Gomm; What Do Astrologers
Believe? Nicholas Campion; What Do Existentialists Believe? Richard Appignanesi; What Do Jews
Believe? Edward Kessler; What Do Greens Believe? Joe Smith; What Do Zionists Believe? Colin
Schindler; What Do Pagans Believe? Graham Harvey; What Do Hindus Believe? Rachel Dwyer ;
What Do Catholics Believe? Leonie Caldicott
Rights sold: Finland (Otava), Portugal (Dom Quixote), Holland (Ad. Donker), Italy (Vallardi reverted), Greece (Orpheas), US (Walker Books), Brazil (Distribudora Record), Germany (Aurum)
CORVUS: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson
‘An enchanting memoir of a life spent with an inquisitive magpie and sociable rook as ‘pets’ …
Woolfson is aware that she mustn’t anthropomorphise these familiar birds but reading her
beautifully warm prose it’s impossible not to. The nature book of the year by some margin’ Metro
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Corvus is delightful account of sharing a home with birds. Esther Woolfson has been fascinated by
birds, especially corvids, since her daughter rescued a fledgling rook sixteen years ago. That rook –
named Chicken – has lived with the family ever since. Other birds have also taken their place in the
household – a magpie, starling, parrot and the inhabitants of an outdoor dovecote. Living with birds
has allowed Woolfson to learn aspects of bird behaviour which would otherwise have been
impossible to know – the way they happily become part of the structure of a family, how they
communicate, their intelligence, their astonishing empathy. Her account of her experiences is funny
and touching and beautifully written, and gives fascinating insights into the closeness human beings
can achieve with wild creatures.
Esther Woolfson was brought up in Glasgow and studied Chinese at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and Edinburgh University. Her acclaimed short stories have appeared in many anthologies
and have been read on Radio 4. She is the author of Field Notes from a Hidden City, which is also
published by Granta Books. She has won prizes for her nature writing and received a Scottish Arts
Council Travel Grant and a Writer’s Bursary.
Rights sold: US (Counterpoint), Brazil (Editora Record), Poland (WAB)
RED PRINCESS: A Revolutionary Life by Sofka Zinovieff
‘A union of comedy and tragedy infused with the heady romance of a vanished Russia ... a
marvellous story’ Sara Wheeler, Guardian
In 1907 Princess Sophy (‘Sofka’) Dolgoruky was born in St Petersburg. Members of the Imperial
family had attended her parents’ wedding earlier that same year, and the child was born into a
privileged world of nurses, private tutors and elegant tea parties. But all around Russia was in
ferment, and when revolution eventually came, the ten-year-old princess fled with her grandmother
to the Crimea.
This was to be only the first of innumerable upheavals and adventures in Sofka’s life, some the result
of great historical forces, others of her own impetuous temperament. The Russian Revolution
upturned Sofka’s early life and caused her to flee her to England, but it was the Second World War
that left the deepest marks on her adult life. During those years, she left her first husband and lost
her second. Later she was interned in a Nazi prison camp, where she discovered Communism, which
would take her back to the Soviet Union, as an improbable tour guide for British workers.
This affectionate portrait of the red princess by her granddaughter and namesake uses letter, diaries
and interviews to recreate a vanished world and also explore the author’s own Russian roots.
Sofka Zinovieff trained as an anthropologist and has worked as a journalist. She lives in Athens and is
the author of Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens (Granta).
Rights sold: Greece (Livanis), Germany (Deuticke / Insel), Spain (Santillana), Finland (Tammi), Turkey
(Albatros), Poland (Bellona), Estonia (Eesti Päevaleht), US (Pegasus), Brazil (Record), Serbia (Odiseja
Publishing)
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