Black Mamba snapped up by Atlantic

Atlantic Fiction has acquired UK Com + translation (ex Can) rights for Black Mamba by William Friend from Jordan Lees at The Blair Partnership. Black Mamba will be published in HB, TPB and E-book in June 2022.

William Friend studied English, French and Italian at university. He lives in Hertfordshire with his partner. Black Mamba is his first novel.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers meets The Haunting of Hill House in a debut of loss, ghosts and sexual desire…

Daddy, there’s a man in our room. This is the chilling announcement Alfie hears one night, when he wakes in his quiet, suburban house to find his twin daughters at the foot of his bed. It’s been nine months since Pippa – their mother – suddenly died and they’ve been unsettled ever since, so Alfie assumes they’ve probably had a nightmare. Still, he goes to check to reassure the girls. As expected he finds no man, but in the following days the girls begin to refer to someone called Black Mamba. What seemingly begins as an imaginary friend quickly develops into something darker, more obsessive, potentially violent. Alfie finds himself struggling, and so he turns to Julia – Pippa’s twin and a psychotherapist – for help. But as Black Mamba’s coils tighten around the girls, Alfie and Julia must contend with their own unspoken sense of loss, their unacknowledged attraction to one another, and the true character of the presence poisoning the twins’ minds.

James Roxburgh, Publishing Director for Atlantic Fiction, says:

‘Black Mamba is a fabulous novel, fluent in the grammar of horror writing but also a deeply sophisticated account of sublimated grief and sexual desire. It’s particularly good at challenging our assumptions of what modern families look like, what might be the emotional and psychological cost of wanting to be a parent in a family that might fall outside of the ‘perfect’ dominant-cultural paradigm. It makes me think of Babadook or Hereditary, work that’s both challenging and moving, but also able to have its dark fun with us, making our bones feel cold and leaving us checking under the bed before lights out.’

Blackstock acquires Silje Ulstein’s ‘fast-paced and addictive’ debut Reptile Memoirs

Peter Blackstock, Publisher of Grove Press UK and Deputy Publisher of Grove Atlantic, has acquired World English Language rights from Annette Orre at Oslo Literary Agency for Silje Ulstein’s debut novel, Reptile Memoirs (translated by Alison McCullough). Rights have been sold in 13 territories.

Silje Ulstein has a masters degree in Literature from the University of Oslo and studied creative writing at the Bergen Writing Academy. Reptile Memoirs, a Norwegian bestseller, is her debut novel. She lives in Oslo.

A brilliantly twisty and unusual literary thriller, Reptile Memoirs asks the question: Can you ever really shed your skin?

Late one night, in the aftermath of a party in the apartment she shares with two friends in Ålesund, Liv sees a python on a TV nature show and becomes obsessed with the idea of buying a snake as a pet. Soon Nero, a baby Burmese python, becomes the apartment’s fourth roommate. As Liv bonds with Nero, she is struck by a desire that surprises her with its intensity. Finally, she is safe.

Thirteen years later, in the nearby town of Kristiansund, Mariam Lind goes on a shopping trip with her eleven-year-old daughter, Iben. Following an argument Mariam storms off, expecting her young daughter to make her own way home . . . but she never does. Detective Roe Olsvik, new to the Kristiansund police department, is assigned to the case of Iben’s disappearance. As he interrogates Mariam, he instantly suspects her –but there is much more to this case and these characters than their outer appearances would suggest.

A biting and constantly shifting tale of family secrets, rebirth and the legacy of trauma, Reptile Memoirs is a brilliant exploration of the cold-bloodedness of humanity.

Silje Ulstein says,

‘It has been so wonderful for me to meet and work with the excellent staff at Grove Press UK, and I am deeply moved by how they’ve embraced my first novel. I am truly convinced that Reptile Memoirs has found the best possible UK home. I am also absolutely thrilled by the early reviews, and I really look forward to going to festivals and book signings if the situation allows it. And to my UK readers, I hope you’ll find that my dark and quirky thriller lives up to your expectations. Please forgive me if the snake keeps you up.’

Peter Blackstock says,

‘I first read Reptile Memoirs at a very distracted time, back in October 2020, with no vaccine in sight and the US elections around the corner and was completely whisked away by Silje Ulstein’s brilliant and surprising plotting, and the evocative writing for which translator Alison McCullough also deserves credit. Reptile Memoirs is fast-paced and addictive, but thought-provoking too. It’s a brilliant crime novel and much more besides. I hope that readers and reviewers are as taken with it as I was.’

Alison McCullough is a Norwegian to English translator and writer. She was awarded a National Centre for Writing Emerging Translator Mentorship in 2017. She lives in Stavanger, Norway.

Reptile Memoirs will be published in hardback, trade paperback and ebook on March 17^th 2022, and Silje Ulstein will be appearing at UK literary festivals throughout the year.

Blackstock acquires New Yorker staffer Rebecca Mead’s memoir

Peter Blackstock, Publisher of Grove Press UK and the US editor of Douglas Stuart, Bernardine Evaristo, and Sayaka Murata, has acquired Home/Land: A Memoir of Departure and Return by New Yorker staff writer Rebecca Mead. Blackstock bought UK Commonwealth rights (ex-Canada) from Susanna Lea on behalf of The Robbins Office. Home/Land will be published in hardback and ebook on 21^st April 2022.

Rebecca Mead has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1997. She has profiled many subjects and has contributed more than two hundred pieces to the Talk of the Town. She is the author of One Perfect Day and The Road to Middlemarch, a New York Times best seller. She has served as a McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton University and is the recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in London.

When the New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead relocated to her birth city, London, with her family in the summer of 2018, she was both fleeing the political situation in America and seeking to expose her son to a wider world. With a keen sense of what she’d given up as she left New York, her home of thirty years, she tried to knit herself into the fabric of a changed London. The move raised poignant questions about place: What does it mean to leave the place you have adopted as home and country? And what is the value and cost of uprooting yourself?

In a deft mix of memoir and reportage, drawing on literature and art, recent and ancient history, and the experience of encounters with individuals, environments and landscapes in New York City and in England, Mead artfully explores themes of identity, nationality and inheritance. She recounts her time in the coastal town of Weymouth, where she grew up; her dizzying first years in New York where she broke into journalism; the rich process of establishing a new home for her dual-national son in London. Along the way, she gradually reckons with the complex legacy of her parents. Home/Land is a stirring inquiry into how to be present where we are, while never forgetting where we have been.

Rebecca Mead says,

‘Home/Land is a book about both giving up and making a home, and I am delighted that it has found its own home in the UK with the nimble and thoughtful publishing team at Grove Press.’

Peter Blackstock says,

‘As a Brit who has lived in New York for more than a decade, I was predisposed to love Home/Land – but I was delighted when my Atlantic Books colleagues all felt as strongly as I did. Rebecca Mead is an extraordinary writer, with the gift to make these well-known cities new through her brilliant perspective. At a time when the Atlantic Ocean feels wider than ever, Home/Land is a joy to read.’

Atlantic buys two novels from Camilla Grudova

Atlantic Fiction has acquired UK Com, Ex Can, rights for two books by Camilla Grudova from Sophie Scard at United Agents. Children of Paradise will be published in HB, TPB and E-book in June 2022.

When Holly applies for a job at the Paradise — one of the city’s oldest cinemas, squashed into the ground floor of a block of flats — she thinks it will be like any other shift work. She cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, avoids the belligerent old owner, Iris, and is ignored by her aloof but tight-knit colleagues who seem as much a part of the building as its fraying carpets and endless dirt. Dreadful, lonely weeks pass while she longs for their approval, a silent voyeur. So when she finally gains the trust of this cryptic band of oddballs, Holly transforms from silent drudge to rebellious insider and gradually she too becomes part of the Paradise — unearthing its secrets, learning its history and haunting its corridors after hours with the other ushers. It is no surprise when violence strikes, tempers change and the group, eyes still affixed to the screen, starts to rapidly go awry…

Camilla Grudova lives in Edinburgh. She holds a degree in Art History and German from McGill University, Montreal. Her fiction has appeared in The White Review and Granta. Her critically acclaimed debut collection, The Doll’s Alphabet, was published in 2017. This is her first novel.

James Roxburgh, Publishing Director for Atlantic Fiction, says:

‘Credit to my former colleague, Bobby Mostyn-Owen, for bringing Camilla to Atlantic, but their enthusiasm very much represented the rest of the company’s: Camilla is a stunning, original writer, and her novel is a gorgeous, surrealist take on cineastes and sex, misfit friendships and corporate exploitation. It’s as if Angela Carter had written The Dreamers, and we’re hugely proud to give such an inventive writer a long-term home.’

Camilla Grudova says,

‘I am ecstatic to find a home at Atlantic Books and writing more weird things!’

Two novels by Danny Denton to Atlantic

Atlantic Books has acquired UK Comm (ex. Canada) rights to two novels by Danny Denton. Publishing Director for Fiction James Roxburgh bought them in a pre-empt from Tracy Bohan at The Wylie Agency. The first of these novels, All Along the Echo, will be published in hardback, trade paperback, and eBook in April 2022, and has been described by Lisa McInerney as a ‘boisterous chorus, brimming with humanity… It feels like a living thing, dancing and dodging, surprising and poignant’.

Tony Cooney, a middle-aged radio talk-show host, takes a road trip across Ireland with his producer, Louise (Lou) Fitzpatrick, as part of a publicity stunt organized by a local car dealership. Their aim is to give away to one lucky winner the Mazda 2 that they’re driving, the catch being that it must go to one of the many emigrants who have recently returned home to escape a wave of escalating terror attacks in London. But as they navigate dual-carriageways and Holiday Inns, giving airtime and narrative to the great cacophony of voices calling into the show, the car competition transforms into a surreal quest – Tony to find his first love, Lou to find answers to impossible questions, all of us to discover whether our lives ever add up to more than the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

Danny Denton is a novelist and a lecturer in creative writing at University College Cork. His first novel, The Earlie King & The Kid In Yellow, was nominated for ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at the Irish Book Awards and also shortlisted for the Collyer-Bristow Prize. Among other publications, Denton’s work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Southword, Granta, Winter Papers, The Dublin Review, Guardian, Irish Times and Big Issue.

James Roxburgh, editor, says:

‘All Along the Echo is about the tremendous static of life, and how from that static we assemble for ourselves our own intimate sense of meaning, of place, of reality. So much of contemporary literature is about the narrow signals – a dynamic here, a relationship there – whereas Danny Denton’s brilliant, bravura capturing of modern Ireland is about the glorious noise of existence, in all its huge and fabulous totality. I think he’s one of the smartest and most fearless writers of his generation and giving such an author as Danny a long-term home on our list feels to me a particularly eloquent example of the ambition of Atlantic Fiction.’

Danny Denton says:

‘I couldn’t be more thrilled to have found a home for my work at Atlantic. Not only have they spent the last twenty years publishing work of the highest, most interesting quality – books I’ve utterly lost and found myself in – but they are also one of the bravest publishers I know of. So, it’s the greatest thing to be working with James and his brilliant team. And, in an industry where publishers increasingly commit to ‘books’ as opposed to ‘authors’, I’m so very grateful for the opportunity to work with them long-term.’

Atlantic Books acquires ground-breaking book on human rights in the digital age

Atlantic Books has acquired World English Rights for print, audio and ebook to Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds, the first book by leading human rights barrister Susie Alegre. Publishing Director for Non-Fiction Mike Harpley bought the book in a three-way auction from Charlie Brotherstone at BCM.

Without a moment’s pause, we share our most intimate thoughts with trillion-dollar tech companies. Their algorithms categorize us and jump to conclusions about who we are. They even shape our everyday thoughts and actions – from who we date and how we vote, to our interactions with the police. But this is just the latest front in an age-old struggle.

Part history and part manifesto, Freedom to Think charts the history and fragility of our most basic human right: freedom of thought. From Galileo to Alexa, human rights lawyer Susie Alegre explores how the powerful have always sought to get inside our heads, influence how we think and shape what we buy. Providing a bold new framework to understand how our agency is being systematically undermined, Freedom to Think is a ground-breaking and vital charter for safeguarding our minds in the digital age.

Susie Alegre is a leading human rights barrister and Associate at the internationally renowned Doughty Street Chambers. She has been a legal pioneer in digital human rights, in particular the impact of artificial intelligence on the human rights to freedom of thought and opinion. She is also Senior Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

James Pulford, who will publish the book following Harpley’s departure for Pan Macmillan, said,

‘Susie explains why intrusive algorithms don’t just invade our privacy but threaten our very humanity. But what really sets her book apart is its bold defence of human rights and its powerful proposals for their role in fighting the encroachment of big tech. It will be hugely influential and I can’t wait to publish it.’

Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds will be published in hardback, trade paperback, and eBook in April 2022.

Atlantic Books acquires new novel from Christos Tsiolkas

Atlantic Books has acquired UK Comm rights (excluding Canada, ANZ) to Christos Tsiolkas’ new novel, 7 ½. Atlantic MD and Publisher Will Atkinson bought rights from Jenny Hewson at Lutyens & Rubinstein.

7 ½ is a smart, humane, provocative novel by the acclaimed author of The Slap and Damascus about finding joy and beauty in a raging world, about the refractions of memory and time, and the mystery of art and its creation.

A man arrives at a house on the coast to write a book. Separated from his lover and family and friends, he finds the solitude he craves in the pyrotechnic beauty of nature, just as the world he has shut out is experiencing a cataclysmic shift. The preoccupations that have galvanised him and his work fall away and he becomes lost in memory and beauty. He begins to tell a story, about a retired porn star who is made an offer he can’t refuse, and so returns to the world he fled years before, all too aware of the danger of opening the door to past temptations and long-buried desires. Can he resist the oblivion and bliss they promise?

‘Rejecting the rage of contemporary politics for a tender celebration of sensuality, nature, memory and love, 7½ makes a defiant claim: that even now, as the world burns, beauty is worth our attention.’  Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of one collection of short stories and seven novels, including the international bestseller The Slap. His work has won, among other awards, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the ALS Gold Medal and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, and has been listed for the Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.

Will Atkinson said,

‘Christos is one of Atlantic’s most important authors, and this novel is brilliant proof of why: it is a work that is full of serious meditation on unforgiving modern politics, on erotic encounter and the splendour of the natural world, on the imperatives of truth and beauty in art. We continue to be incredibly proud to be the home of such a singular, original talent.’

7 ½ will be published in hardback and eBook in February 2022.

Tomiwa Owolade takes £10k top prize at RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards

Writer and critic Tomiwa Owolade has won the top prize at the RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for his “powerful” forthcoming non-fiction book This is Not America, which Atlantic will publish in 2023.

The annual prize rewards first-time writers of non-fiction, and was judged this year by Gwen Adshead, Fiona Boyle and Clive Myrie. .

In This is Not America, which was won by Atlantic in a five-way auction, Owolade interrogates the many discussions about diversity that have arisen since the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“This powerful book appealed strongly to all of the judges; for the calm clarity of its voice, and its call to a nuanced and complex conversation about the diversity of Black identity in Britain today,” Adshead said. “The book’s premise will draw on evidence that the American experience of race may not be true for Britain, and that if we want to challenge racism and bigotry, we must do so using the best quality arguments about the truth of experience. Owolade’s book will stimulate argument and reflection in the best sense and has the potential to change minds for the better, increasing respect and dignity for all.”

Owolade has written columns, essays and book reviews for publications, including the Times, Sunday Times and Financial Times. He is a contributing editor at UnHerd. On receiving the award, he said:

“I am absolutely delighted and frankly stunned to have won the RSL Giles St Aubyn Award. I have never written a book before, and winning this prize is fantastic encouragement for completing This is Not America. I have wanted to be a writer since I was 13: if I wasn’t doing so professionally, I would still be writing. So, to be recognised in this way for doing something I love is wonderful. I am incredibly thankful to the judges for valuing the book I am working on.”

The 2021 awards were celebrated with three specially commissioned animated films by Josh Saunders, featuring recordings of the judges informing the winners of their awards for the first time. All three are available to watch on the RSL’s YouTube channel.

Hannah Gadsby’s Ten Steps to Nanette confirmed for 29th March 2022 publication

Multi award-winning Hannah Gadsby broke comedy with her show Nanette. Now, she takes us through the defining moments in her life and her powerful decision to tell the truth – no matter the cost.

 

‘There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.’  Hannah Gadsby, Nanette

 

Hannah Gadsby’s unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by her blistering honesty and her ability to create both tension and laughter in a single moment. But while her worldwide fame might have looked like an overnight sensation, her path from open mic to the global stage was hard-fought and anything but linear.

 

Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person from Tasmania – where homosexuality was illegal until 1997 – to her ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to her struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette – the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny and the moral significance of truth-telling.

 

Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby’s tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

 

The book is available for pre-order here.

Atlantic Books acquires first book by Channel 4 News’s Symeon Brown

Atlantic Books has acquired World rights to Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy, the first book by Channel 4 News correspondent Symeon Brown. Publishing Director for Non-Fiction Mike Harpley bought the book in a three-way auction from Niki Chang when she was at TGLA. Chang is now at David Higham Associates. UKBC audiobook rights went to Audible.

One in five children want to be an influencer when they grow up, seduced by a life of glamour and fortune. But do they know what they’re letting themselves in for? As Symeon Brown explores in this searing exposé, the reality is much murkier. From YouTube pranksters to Brazilian butt lifts, and OnlyFans to fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes, Get Rich or Lie Trying reveals the real stories behind the filtered selfies and gleaming smiles.

Exposing fraud, exploitation, racism, misogyny and environmental destruction, Brown questions the broken economic model at the heart of the influencer economy, asking if our online race for clout is costing us too much. With an incredible cast of characters from London to LA, this gripping book will captivate and horrify you in equal measure.

Symeon Brown is a correspondent on Channel 4 News covering culture, technology, and crime. His Guardian long read into ‘The Wolves of Instagram’ was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for exposing Britain’s Social Ills and shortlisted at the British Journalism Awards. He has been called ‘the future of journalism’ by Jon Snow and has been published by the Guardian, VICE, and the Huffington Post.

Mike Harpley said,

‘Symeon is a fantastically talented journalist, and we are delighted to be publishing this magnificent book. He makes an important argument about how the influencer economy has filled a void where meaningful and well-paid work used to be – replacing it with a giant pyramid scheme. But he’s also written a really entertaining book that will leave everyone questioning modern internet culture.’

Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy will be published in hardback, trade paperback, and eBook in March 2022.