With no offence meant to my colleagues, I'm going to start a petition to extend Frankfurt Book Fair by a month to keep everyone nice and busy so I can get work done.
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canongatebooks
@canongatebooks@bookish.community
mastodon 4.7.2Publisher. Always independent.
Based in Edinburgh and London.
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Joined November 20, 2022
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We publish two new books today:
Sleeping Beauties by David Byrne is about great, important contributions to arts and science that, at first, failed. Genius that went un-celebrated, unrecognised, until it wasn't (often much, much later).
What makes some ideas go to sleep? And what wakes them up?
If you've read How Music Works, you know what a fascinating writer David Byrne is (besides all his other achievements).
https://canongate.co.uk/books/4955-sleeping-beauties-why-good-ideas-go-dormant-and-how-they-wake-up/
Have just learned the word 'Wimmelbilder' ('teeming picture') to refer to the style of illustration where the page is covered in characters and detail.
Tilda Swinton is one of the most celebrated actors of her generation. She is also an iconoclast, an artist, a style icon and, now, an author. Her characteristically original first book, Material Evidence, tells the story of her remarkable life.
Find out all about it:
https://canongate.co.uk/tilda-swinton-announcement/
Author photo by Brigitte Lacombe.
Only one day left to apply for this Marketing Assistant role based in our Edinburgh office. (Full-time, £26,000.) Details and how to apply:
https://canongate.co.uk/about/jobs/marketing-assistant/
Reminded today of this quote from Robert Louis Stevenson. For anyone who has ever been told to write what they know.
(Stevenson is writing in response to Henry James, who in his own essay ‘The Art of Fiction’ called Treasure Island “delightful”, but, Stevenson reports…)
“He cannot criticise the author, as he goes, “because […] I have been a child, but I have never been on a quest for buried treasure.” Here is, indeed a wilful paradox; for if he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been a child. There never was a child (unless Master James) but has hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a military commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but as fought, and suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle, and triumphantly protected innocence and beauty.”
(From Stevenson’s essay ‘A Humble Remonstrance’.)
I recommended the Alasdair Gray short story Logopandocy to someone in the pub last night, and now I need to let them know that – although I stand by the recommendation – it is 60pp long and for much of that length it is willfully (if playfully) impenetrable. And that I will not take offense if they bounce off of it and do not even reach the part I described to them.
We publish these three books today:
A big new book from David Shrigley, the Turner Prize-nominated artist, CREATIVE WRITING is pure words, pure joy, pure Shrigley.
THREE BROTHERS IN A BOAT is an adrenaline-soaked account of how the Maclean Brothers broke the world record for rowing non-stop across the Pacific Ocean. This book is awash with lessons in grit, determination and resilience.
and
ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE BEEN AGAINST THIS is the internationally critically acclaimed and bestselling book from the award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, who unpicks the hypocrisy and injustices of the West at this volatile and shocking time.
All available now, at your friendly local bookshop. Or online: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/out-today
It’s Agatha Christie’s birthday! (136 years young, and still charming readers with tales of murder and mystery.)
Read our interview with Cathy Rentzenbrink, who set herself the formidable task of reading every book Christie published, in order. (That's 72, only counting the crime novels, and there are others…)
https://canongate.substack.com/p/i-did-sometimes-feel-a-bit-deranged
A public service announcement for writers: please be very wary of scams. Canongate editors use email addresses from @canongate.co.uk and will not email you from other accounts.
We have heard several accounts recently of people who have been contacted by malicious actors claiming to be real Canongate editors. The scammers have expressed enthusiasm for the writer’s work and led them on with the ultimate goal of extracting money from them. This has even involved including other seemingly legitimate ‘people’ in email chains.
Double check any email purporting to be from a Canongate editor comes from @canongate.co.uk. If you are not 100% sure feel free to email info@canongate.co.uk and we can tell you if an editor has been in touch with you.
The same is true for approaches from other publishers: verify the domain. Double check with a known email address if necessary.
Writers: please be aware of scammers impersonating Canongate editors
https://canongate.co.uk/news/writers-please-be-aware-of-scammers-impersonating-canongate-editors/
Congratulations to Charlotte McConaghy on WILD DARK SHORE which is longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction!
A spectacularly choreographed eco-thriller traversing nature and human frailty – full of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, WILD DARK SHORE is a novel not to be missed
‘I am in awe. I am in love. I am heartbroken. All of it possible, all at once, after a book as extraordinary as this one’ CLARE DAVERLEY
‘Breathtaking’ HANNAH KENT
‘Spellbinding’ Washington Post
‘Had me gripped from the very first page’ RACHEL JOYCE
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island’s researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain.
Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore. The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she’s not the only one on the island with a secret.
Thanks to the Women's Prize team, and sponsors Baileys and Audible!
You can read Wild Dark Shore now, available at your favourite local bookshop and online: https://buythebook.online/wild-dark-shore
Congratulations to the wonderful Katie Goh, whose fascinating and idiosyncratic (in the best possible way) Foreign Fruit – a personal history of the orange – has been shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize.
'A sharp-sweet memoir of change, identity and hybridity. I loved it' Katherine May
Available now in bookshops and online: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/415/9781837261178
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IF THIS BE MAGIC is a fascinating exploration of translation and Shakespeare from award-winning translator Daniel Hahn.
“A distillation of knowledge of a depth and breadth that makes you boggle anew at what one book can do” Guardian
Our #introduction to #bookstodon!
Hello, we are Canongate Books, an independent #publisher of an eclectic mix of #authors for an eclectic and discerning audience of readers. You might know us from the spines of:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
& many, many more.
We're based in Edinburgh and London, and next year we'll be 50. Hello!
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Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing, NATURE’S GENIUS by David Farrier is a mind-expanding account of how we shape the lives of animals and plants – and how they shape us.
“Nature's Genius is a superb book: subtle, sharp-eyed and fascinating. Here, everyday beings and objects – dogs, buildings, spiders, clocks – are lit anew; thrown into surprising configurations and relationships. Damage and disorder are faced with clear eyes, but hope is also found in unexpected places” Robert Macfarlane
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International bestseller Robert Seethaler returns with THE CAFÉ WITH NO NAME, a captivating historical tale set in 1960s Vienna, and THE LAST MOVEMENT, a moving portrait of an artist at the end of his life aboard a ship from New York to Europe. Plus, his Man Booker International shortlisted A WHOLE LIFE.
“Seethaler is in his very own league” Elizabeth Strout
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In THE GREAT GOOD PLACES, literary giant Margaret Drabble delivers a luminous hybrid of short fiction, essays and memoir.
“Wonderful… There aren't many chroniclers of our older years who do it so well, with such wit and realism and intelligence” Tessa Hadley
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FOOD FIGHT by Stuart Gillespie follows a veteran of four decades at the frontline of global food policy, exposing how malnutrition is enmeshed with other crises and what we can all do to change it.
“This isn't just a good read, it's an essential reference. Scholarly, literate and deeply moving – Food Fight is the essential food book of this year and years to come” Chris Van Tulleken
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FOREIGN FRUIT by Katie Goh is a hauntingly beautiful hybrid memoir that uses the cultivation of the orange to explore identity.
“A deeply thoughtful, funny and moving treatise on identity and the myriad factors that go into influencing it. A sharp and exhilarating read from start to finish. You will never look at oranges in your fruit bowl the same way again” Big Issue
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LONELY CROWDS by Stephanie Wambugu is a piercing debut set in the glamorous 90s NYC art scene, centring on a friendship teetering on the obsessive.
“The best novel about friendship I have read for years, the writing precise, the feelings volcanic. The ecstasies of friendship and its mayhem are laid bare” Susie Boyt
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Get it now from your friendly local bookshop or online:
https://buythebook.online/son-of-nobody
We're thrilled to announce Lily King‘ HEART THE LOVER has been longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction!
Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.
'Touching, thoughtful, a deeply affecting love story about time and regret' DAVID NICHOLLS
'Steeped in yearning, melancholy and the reckoning with mortality that must come to us all . . . King’s writing still pierces you’ The Times
'Exploring how first love shapes a lifetime, here is a novel of piercing clarity' Independent
'Beautifully written . . . I was hooked from the first page' Daily Mail
'You knew I’d write a book about you someday'
Our narrator understands good love stories – their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules.
She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined – with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love.
Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth.
Thanks to the Women's Prize team, and sponsors Baileys and Audible!
You can read Heart the Lover now, available in your favourite local bookshop & online: https://buythebook.online/heart-the-lover-by-lily-king
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@Bakerpictures@mastodonapp.uk Ah yes, of course it has! And wonderful to see that book living on & being an inspiration!
@ultrazool@mastodon.scot there's always next year! (And plenty of time to get the tattoo in the meantime...)
A very happy publication day to Erin Somers (The Ten Year Affair) and Damian Barr (The Two Roberts)!
The Two Roberts is a novel based on the true love between artists and outsiders Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun tracing them from 1930s Glasgow to wartime London.
“Crackles with creative rebellion” Douglas Stuart
https://canongate.co.uk/books/4965-the-two-roberts/
Two parents. Happily married. Just not to each other. The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life and the roads not taken, that ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true?
“The midlife adultery story our entire generation deserves” Guardian
https://canongate.co.uk/books/5417-the-ten-year-affair/