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Contents 1 2 – 3 4 – 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 – 25 26 – 27
Introduction Far South David Enrique Spellman The Reinvention of Love Helen Humphreys In the Seventies Barry Miles No Off Switch Andy Kershaw To Live Outside the Law Leaf Fielding Black By Design Pauline Black Stabat Mater Tiziano Scarpa Fear Gabriel Chevallier The Silent Cry Kenzaburo Ōe The Origins of Violence Fabrice Humbert Dust Devils Roger Smith The Dead Women of Juárez Sam Hawken The Interrogative Mood Padgett Powell Edisto Padgett Powell The Skin I Inhabit Thierry Jonquet We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver Recently Published Titles Essential Backlist Agents & Representatives
28 29 30 31
Introducing The Clerkenwell Press Alice Judith Hermann Disaster Was My God Bruce Duffy Wall of Days Alastair Bruce
Introduction Kafka wrote ‘What we need are books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow on the skull why bother reading it in the first place?’ Fear, by Gabriel Chevallier, the author of Clochemerle, fits the bill perfectly. First published in France in 1930, it is an autobiographical anti-war novel that was considered an incitement to treason and quickly withdrawn. Recently republished in France, it has been hailed as a lost classic: this is its first English translation.
Celebrating 25 years of Serpent’s Tail 1986 – 2011
SERPENT’S TAIL
Serpent’s Tail 3A Exmouth House Pine Street London EC1R 0JH 020 7841 6300 info@serpentstail.com www.serpentstail.com
1986–2011
As digital publishing expands and explodes, the search for a work of art which genuinely combines a traditional novel with new media has become the holy grail. Far South does just this. Book, video, graphic novel, film and sound recording, it creatively uses all these in the search for Gerardo Fischer, a missing Uruguayan theatre director; it takes storytelling to a new height. Enjoy, Pete Ayrton Publisher 1
You have in your hands extracts from the casebook of Juan Manuel PĂŠrez, a private investigator, who was contracted to search for Gerardo Fischer, the founder and director of the Real and Present Theatre Company. Fischer disappeared on January 9th 2006.
Far South
David Enrique Spellman
New Title
A compelling novel and a groundbreaking experiment in storytelling Far South is the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez, an investigator in search of Gerardo Fischer, a Uruguayan theatre director who has gone missing. Called in by the community of artists with whom Gerardo lived, Pérez quickly becomes enmeshed in the mystery. A multi-platform experiment in the possibilities of digital fiction as well as a compelling work on paper, Far South includes video witness depositions, a graphic novella, short films and sound recordings.
www.far-south.org Preview access available on request through Serpent’s Tail Perfect for digital reading as well as combining a printed book with a laptop/iPhone
David Enrique Spellman is the voice for The Far South Collective, a loosely affiliated group of artists of all disciplines. He works with Esko Tikanmäki Portogales, a Uruguayan web designer. Spellman sees himself as a citizen of the world.
Fiction/Crime £10.99 Demy Trade Paperback 304pp ISBN: 9781846688102 eISBN: 9781847657725 September World Tr
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Š Getty Images
I think of Adèle, and how, if I die, she will weep and despair and be impressed by my courage. So, I had better summon some courage. I take a deep breath and hold it, close my eyes, and brace myself for the sting and the first bitter taste of darkness.
The Reinvention of Love Helen Humphreys
New Title
Based on the true story of Charles Sainte-Beuve, his lover Adèle and her husband Victor Hugo When Charles Sainte-Beuve, a French literary journalist, meets Victor Hugo, an ambitious young writer, he is swept into a world of grand emotions, a world where words can become swords. But it is not Victor he is really attracted to – it is his wife Adèle. Soon the two lovers are on the edge of a great scandal. As Sainte-Beuve – a man like no other man – struggles to hold on to what is left of his great love, he finds that only words can rekindle the flame. An atmospheric story of delicacy and emotion, of the experience of professional jealousy and personal passion, The Reinvention of Love is a mesmerising novel.
‘Witty, sad and gorgeous in equal measure, this story of a man like no other probes love like a wound’ Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Helen Humphreys is a Canadian novelist and poet. She was born in the UK, and now lives in Kingston, Ontario. When she was younger she was kicked out of high school and finished her education at an alternative school. Humphreys’ first novel, Leaving Earth, was a New York Times Notable Book in 1998 and won the City of Toronto Book Award.
Fiction £12.99 Hardback Demy 320pp ISBN: 9781846687983 eISBN: 9781847657602 July UK COM ex CAN
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In the Seventies Barry Miles
New Title
Adventures in the counter-culture In The Seventies tells the story of London and New York during the period that is often written off as one long hangover after the exuberance of the sixties. Miles remembers many hippie dreams becoming reality, while others returned in shiny new clothes as the punk revolution. Beginning at Allen Ginsberg’s commune and moving on to cataloguing William Burroughs’ archives, Miles describes the decade that began with David Bowie in drag and ended with Grace Jones naked at Studio 54. Writing for NME, he reported on both the CBGBs scene and was the first to interview the Clash, Ramones, Talking Heads and Patti Smith. Engaging and idealistic, In the Seventies challenges modern perceptions with great anecdotes featuring an extraordinary cast of characters. Memoir/Popular Culture £12.99 Demy Trade Paperback 256pp ISBN: 9781846686900 eISBN: 9781847654946 September World Tr
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Barry Miles is a writer, luminary of the 1960s underground and businessman. Miles has written biographies of McCartney, Lennon, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski and Allen Ginsberg, in addition to books on The Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Clash as well as London Calling, a general history of London’s counter-culture since 1945.
London Calling brought attention to Miles as an influential cultural figure – this is his personal story Features recollections of giants of culture, from Paul McCartney to Brian Eno, Patti Smith to Debbie Harry
No Off Switch Andy Kershaw
New Title
Britain’s maverick radio DJ and foreign correspondent is back with this no-holds-barred autobiography One year Andy Kershaw was Billy Bragg’s roadie, the next he was presenting Live Aid on TV to 400 million people. A passionate enthusiast for music, over a twenty-five year career he has worked for the Rolling Stones, shared an office with John Peel and introduced world and roots music to BBC radio. He has also filed numerous reports for Radio 4 and was the only BBC journalist present during the Rwanda genocide. Most recently, his marriage broke down, which led to his spending time in prison on the Isle of Man for breaking a restraining order. Andy Kershaw writes about all of this with candour, insight and immediacy.
A compelling human story: Kershaw as ever flings himself in at the deep end A riotous autobiography taking in fame, (conspicuous lack of) fortune, and rock’n’roll
Andy Kershaw was born in Rochdale in 1959 and became a Radio 1 DJ. He presented Whistle Test and Live Aid and for most of the past twenty-five years has had a weekly radio show. He is also a well-known foreign journalist, having filed reports for From Our Own Correspondent and for the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent.
Memoir £16.99 Royal Hardback 320pp ISBN: 9781846687440 eISBN: 9781847653031 July World Tr
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To Live Outside the Law Leaf Fielding
New Title
He was arrested in Operation Julie, the biggest drugs bust in history. But he didn’t do it for the money, he wanted to change the world To Live Outside the Law is the first insider account of the LSD conspiracy ended by Operation Julie, Britain’s biggest drug bust. The book opens with Leaf Fielding’s arrest in a pre-dawn police raid and ends five years later with his release from jail. The narrative moves between the harsh, dangerous world of prison and Fielding's previous life – from a brutal boarding school to his LSD epiphany in the summer of love. Acid transformed him from nerdy scholar to footloose freak. His ten years of adventures in the hippie underground took him across Europe, to the Andes, to Indochina and on to the edge of the known universe. They also led inexorably to his downfall.
Memoir/True Crime £12.99 Demy Trade Paperback 320pp ISBN: 9781846687969 eISBN: 9781847657619 July World Tr
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Twenty-eight years after his release from prison, Leaf Fielding has been a teacher in Spain and a philanthropist, setting up a home for orphans in Malawi. He now sells organic produce in the south of France where he lives.
Operation Julie was a major news story, and inspired the song ‘Julie’s Been Working for the Drug Squad’ by The Clash
Black By Design Pauline Black
New Title
A 2-Tone Memoir – from the lead singer of The Selecter Lead singer for platinum-selling 2-Tone band The Selecter, Pauline Black has been in the music business for over thirty years. The only woman in a movement dominated by men, she was the Queen of British Ska, and she saw The Specials, Madness and all the other top bands of that generation at their best ... and worst. Black was born in 1953 to Anglo-Jewish/Nigerian parents. Adopted by a white working-class family in Romford in the 1950s, Pauline was always made to feel different, both by the local community and by members of her extended family. Combining her recollections of the 2-Tone phenomenon with her search for her birth parents, Black By Design is a funny and enlightening story of music and roots. Born in Romford, Pauline Black is a singer and actress who gained fame as the lead singer of The Selecter. After the band split in 1982, Black developed an acting career in television and theatre. She won the 1991 Time Out Award for Best Actress, for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in the play All or Nothing At All.
Music/Memoir ÂŁ12.99 Demy Trade Paperback 320pp ISBN: 9781846687907 eISBN: 9781847657626 August World Tr
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Stabat Mater Tiziano Scarpa
New Title
In early eighteenth-century Venice an orphan girl discovers independence through the music of Vivaldi The female musicians of the Instituto della Pietà orphanage play from a gallery in the church. They live segregated from the world. Cecilia is a violinist who, during anguished sleepless nights, writes letters to the mother she never knew, haunted by her and hating her by turns. But things begin to change when a new violin teacher arrives at the institute. The astonishing music of Vivaldi, the ‘Red Priest’, electrifies her and changes her attitude to life, compelling her to make a courageous choice.
Fiction £9.99 Paperback with flaps 176pp ISBN: 9781846687693 eISBN: 9781847656537 August World English Translated by Shaun Whiteside US 10
Tiziano Scarpa was born in Venice in 1963. He is a poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. Stabat Mater won the 2009 Strega Prize, the Italian equivalent of the Booker. Scarpa lives in Venice. His Venice is a Fish, also published by Serpent’s Tail, is an international bestseller.
‘It always feels as if there’s an extra sense available to Tiziano Scarpa, one that fuses perception and emotion. He calls it a scrittura totale, total writing. I just think it’s genius’ Michelle Lovric, author of The Book of Human Skin ‘A heady tale of music and foundlings’ Daily Telegraph
Fear
Gabriel Chevallier
New Title
A rediscovered, autobiographical classic of war literature First published in 1930, Fear graphically describes the terrible experience of soldiers during World War I. It tells the story of Jean Dartemont, a young man called up in 1915. He is not a rebel, but he is not awed by hierarchical authority. After an exceedingly short training period, he refuses to follow his platoon and is sent to Artois in the trenches. With absolute realism, Gabriel Chevallier depicts what he himself experienced every day, for months: violence, blood, death, bodies … One day, he is wounded, evacuated and hospitalised. To the nurses, who consider it their duty to stimulate the soldiers’ fighting spirit, Jean, when asked what he did at the front, replies: ‘I WAS AFRAID’.
‘The most beautiful book ever written on the tragic events that blood-stained Europe for nearly five years ... a classic’ Le Libertaire
Gabriel Chevallier was widely known as the author of Clochemerle, which was written in 1934, translated into twenty-six languages and sold several million copies. Chevallier was called up at the start of WWI and wounded a year later, but returned to the front. Fear draws on his experience.
Fiction £15.00 Hardback Demy 320pp ISBN: 9781846687266 eISBN: 9781847656438 November World English Translated by Malcolm Imrie US 11
The Silent Cry Kenzaburo Ōe
Classic Paperback
The key work by the Nobel Prize winner Two brothers, Takashi and Mitsu, return from Tokyo to the village of their childhood. Selling their family home leads them to an inescapable confrontation with their family history. Their attempt to escape the influence of the city ends in failure as they realize that its tentacles extend to everything in the countryside, including their own relationship. When Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize, The Silent Cry was identified as his key work. The Nobel Committee stated that ‘his poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicaments’.
Fiction £7.99 B Format Paperback 288pp ISBN: 9781846688072 eISBN: 9781847657732 September UK COM Translated by John Bester
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Winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. Born in 1935, Kenzaburo Ōe is the leading Japanese writer of his generation. He spent the 1960s in Paris where he was influenced by Sartre.
‘Though thoroughly Japanese, Ōe, in the range of hope and despair he covers, seems to me to have in him a touch of Dostoevsky’ Henry Miller ‘Somehow – and this is what gives his art such unquestionable stature – Ōe manages to smuggle a comic thread in all this tragedy’ Independent
The Origins of Violence Fabrice Humbert
New Title
Winner of the inaugural French Orange Prize in 2009 and the 2010 Prix Renaudot Paperback Prize During a school trip to Buchenwald concentration camp, a young French teacher comes across a photograph of a man whose resemblance to his own father is uncanny. However, the man had a different name and died in 1942. Returning to France, he finds that the memory of the photograph refuses to leave him. He decides to embark on a search for its subject, which takes him to the heart of the Nazi machine, but more disturbingly draws him into the dark past of his own family. Subtle and moving, The Origins of Violence shows the limitless ways humans inflict harm, and how individuals, not societies, are the perpetrators.
‘One is shocked by the repressed violence gathered behind smiling decorum. Really a brilliant book’ Le Canard Enchaîné
Fabrice Humbert currently teaches literature at a French secondary school. In 2009 The Origins of Violence was published in France, where it was immediately hailed by the press as ‘a revelation’. The novel won the first French Orange Prize for Fiction.
Fiction £11.99 Demy Trade Paperback 256pp ISBN: 9781846687501 eISBN: 9781847656476 July UK COM Translated by Frank Wynne
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The Interrogative Mood Padgett Powell
Paperback
Precise and beautiful, intimate and hilarious, you will never have read anything quite like it Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view, do children smell good? Through a seemingly random but infinitely artful series of questions, this small masterpiece mysteriously, elusively, hilariously lights up life.
Fiction £7.99 B Format Paperback 176pp ISBN: 9781846683671 eISBN: 9781847652874 November World ex USA, CAN
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Padgett Powell is a novelist whose Edisto was nominated for the US National Book Award. He teaches writing at the University of Florida.
‘A celebration of the human need to understand’ Financial Times ‘Profound, heartbreaking and fantastically funny’ Sunday Times ‘A work of real bravado and charm’ Observer
Edisto
Padgett Powell
New Title
After the success of The Interrogative Mood, Serpent’s Tail publishes Powell’s first novel Simons Everson Manigault (‘You say it “Simmons”. I'm a rare one m Simons’) lives with his mother, an eccentric professor known as the Duchess, on an isolated strip of South Carolina coast. Convinced that her son can be a writer of genius, the Duchess has immersed Simons in the classics since birth. Although possessed of a vocabulary and s ophistication beyond his years, Simons feels the normal adolescent bewilderment about the behavior of his parents. His father, the Progenitor, has recently left the family in a dispute over Simons’ upbringing and so the Duchess brings in Taurus, an enigmatic surrogate who tutors the boy in the art of watching the w orld without presumption. ‘Simons Manigault is brother to all literary adolescents ... Edisto is a sparkling read, so full of an energetic intelligence, inventiveness, love of language, and love of people ... Padgett Powell is an extravagantly talented writer’ New York Times Book Review
Fiction £7.99 B Format Paperback 192pp ISBN: 9781846688126 eISBN: 9781847657756 November UK COM
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The Dead Women of Juárez Sam Hawken
Paperback
Murder and abduction in a Mexican border town Since 1993 over 400 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juárez. Residents believe the true number of disappeared stands at 5,000. When a new disappearance is reported, Kelly Courter, a washed-up Texan boxer, and Rafael Sevilla, a Mexican detective, are sucked into an underworld of organised crime, believing they can outwit the corruption all around. The Dead Women of Juárez follows these two men obsessed with seeking the truth about the victims of the Mexican border wars.
Crime Fiction £7.99 B Format Paperback 320pp ISBN: 9781846687747 eISBN: 9781847656551 December World Tr
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Sam Hawken is a native of Texas now living on the east coast of the United States. A graduate of the University of Maryland, he pursued a career as an historian before turning to writing. The Dead Women of Juárez is his first novel.
‘A powerful and shocking novel’ Dreda Say Mitchell ‘A heartfelt book’ Guardian ‘A tense, gripping read and a plea for justice’ Sunday Times
Dust Devils Roger Smith
New Title
An unflinching portrayal of the dark side of the new South Africa Framed for murdering his family, Robert Dell’s only ally is his oldest enemy: his father. Bobby Goodbread, ex-CIA hitman, joins his son on a bloody road trip, bringing with him his hunger for revenge. From Cape Town to a Zulu tribal valley where AIDS, savage feuds and poverty have left the population decimated, they hunt assassin Inja Mazibuko, uncovering a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of the state. Disaster Zondi is also on a desperate mission, returning to the place he fled as a youth to rescue a teenage girl – who may or may not be his daughter – sold into marriage to Mazibuko. These men are thrown together in a spiral of violence and retribution in a country where anarchy has replaced tyranny and human life has never been cheaper.
Praise for Roger Smith: ‘Thanks to his brilliant pared-down style, stunning ear for dialogue and penchant for pitch-black humour; it’s a slick, compulsive page-turner’ Cape Times, South Africa ‘Top-notch ... exposes the seamy side of Cape Town’ The Times
Roger Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now lives in Cape Town. Before turning to a life of crime writing, he was a screenwriter, producer and director.
Crime Fiction £7.99 B Format Paperback Original 288pp ISBN: 9781846687952 eISBN: 9781847657749 September UK COM
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The Skin I Inhabit Thierry Jonquet
Film Tie-In
Film by Pedro Almodovar – starring Antonio Banderas – due for release Autumn 2011 Richard Lafargue is an eminent plastic surgeon haunted by dirty secrets. He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve imprisoned in her bedroom. In alternating chapters, Jonquet introduces seemingly unrelated characters – a criminal on the run after murdering a policeman, a young man who finds himself forced to endure all manner of physical torture at the hands of a mysterious stranger. All are caught in a deceitful web, waiting to meet their fate.
Fiction £7.99 B Format Paperback 128pp ISBN: 9781846687945 eISBN: 9781847657633 August UK COM ex CAN Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
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Thierry Jonquet was born in Paris in 1954. An exponent of the hardboiled style of French noir influenced by post-May 1968 politics, Jonquet is one of France’s best-known crime writers. He died in 2009.
‘A funky, pulpy folk horror … CSI meets Live Flesh’ Arena Previously published by Serpent's Tail as Tarantula
We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver
Film Tie-In
Film starring Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly, directed by Lynne Ramsay, premières at Cannes in May 2011 Eva never wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband, Franklin. Adapted and directed by Lynne Ramsey (Morvern Callar, Ratcatcher), the film of We Need to Talk About Kevin stars Tilda Swinton (I Am Love) and John C. Reilly (The Aviator), with Ezra Miller (Californication) as the eponymous teenage murderer.
‘Stunning’ Daily Mail ‘Startling’ Guardian ‘Superb’ Daily Telegraph Over one million copies sold
Lionel Shriver is a novelist whose books include So Much for That, The Post-Birthday World, A Perfectly Good Family and Double Fault. She is widely published as a journalist. Shriver lives in London and Brooklyn, NY.
Fiction £7.99 B Format Paperback 496pp ISBN: 9781846688065 eISBN: 9781847651747 July World ex USA, CAN , ANZ
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Recently Published
Miral Rula Jebreal
Elliot Allagash Simon Rich
Half Blood Blues Esi Edugyan
‘Vividly described’ The Times
‘Funny, smart and generally bloody brilliant’ Heat
If you don’t tell your story, someone else might tell it for you ...
9781846687891 £7.99 Paperback
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9781846687556 £7.99 Paperback
9781846687754 £10.99 Trade Paperback
Memoirs of a Porcupine Alain Mabanckou ‘Mabanckou’s jokes work the whole spectrum of humour’ Guardian 9781846687679 £10.99 Trade Paperback
Falling Glass Adrian McKinty ‘Unquestionably talented’ Sunday Times 9781846687822 £11.99 Trade Paperback
Essential Fiction
Black Water Rising Attica Locke
Black Rock Amanda Smyth
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction
‘Sings with life, texture and verve’ Daily Mail
9781846687532 £7.99 Paperback
9781846687020 £7.99 Paperback
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives Lola Shoneyin ‘A rich debut ... engrossing and beautifully written’ Harper’s Bazaar 9781846687495 £7.99 Paperback
The Passport Herta Müller
Boy A Jonathan Trigell
‘A masterclass in sparse, clear prose’ Independent on Sunday
‘A fine and moving debut novel’ Independent
9781852421397 £7.99 Paperback
9781846686627 £7.99 Paperback
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Serpent’s Tail Classics
Whatever Michel Houellebecq ‘Funny, terrifying and nauseating’ Independent 9781846687846 £7.99 Paperback
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They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Horace McCoy ‘A remarkable novel’ John Harvey 9781846687396 £7.99 Paperback
The Piano Teacher Elfriede Jelinek ‘Terrifyingly powerful’ Observer 9781846687372 £7.99 Paperback
Beer in the Snooker Club Waguih Ghali ‘A funny, tragic memorial to a man and a country at a time of painful transition’ Observer 9781846687563 £7.99 Paperback
The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa ‘A complete masterpiece’ Independent 9781846687358 £7.99 Paperback
Essential Crime
Red Riding David Peace
Wake Up Dead Roger Smith
Bad Penny Blues Cathi Unsworth
Shoedog George Pelecanos
‘The evil twin of Life on Mars’ Guardian
‘A slick, compulsive page-turner’ Cape Times
‘He writes like a dream’ Guardian
1974 9781846687051 1977 9781846687068 1980 9781846687075 1983 9781846687082 £7.99
9781846687570 £7.99 Paperback
‘As fresh as if you were watching a monochrome classic for the first time’ Financial Times 9781846686788 £7.99 Paperback
9781846687365 £7.99 Paperback
He Died With His Eyes Open Derek Raymond ‘A crackerjack of a crime novel’ Evening Standard 9781852427962 £7.99 Paperback
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Essential Non-Fiction
Blackwater Jeremy Scahill ‘A triumph of investigative reporting’ Naomi Klein 9781846686528 £8.99 Paperback
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Open Veins of Latin America Eduardo Galeano ‘Immensely generous and humane’ Arundhati Roy 9781846687426 £9.99 Paperback
Members Only Paul Willetts
Before Night Falls Reinaldo Arenas
Venice is a Fish Tiziano Scarpa
‘Magnificent’ Daily Telegraph
‘One of the most shattering testimonials ever written on the subject of oppression and defiance’ Mario Vargas Llosa
‘This gem of a book offers practical advice but in a distinctly lyrical tone’ Sunday Telegraph
9781852428082 £9.99 Paperback
9781846687280 £7.99 Paperback
9781846687150 £14.99 Trade Paperback
Essential Music
White Bicycles Joe Boyd
Altered State Matthew Collin
‘The best book about music I have read in years’ Brian Eno
‘Marvellous’ Irvine Welsh
9781852424893 £8.99 Paperback
9781846687136 £8.99 Paperback
A Rocket in My Pocket Max Décharné
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung Lester Bangs
‘Rip-roaring and exciting’ Mojo
‘Wild, funny and unpredictable’ Rolling Stone
9781846687211 £12.99 Trade Paperback
9781852427481 £9.99 Paperback
Memoirs of a Geezer Jah Wobble ‘Articulate, funny and sharply intelligent’ Guardian 9781846687204 £8.99 Paperback
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Introducing The Clerkenwell Press In the year that Serpent’s Tail turns twenty-five and Profile turns fifteen, The Clerkenwell Press is busy being born. We launch in August with two titles. Alastair Bruce’s novel Wall of Days is a brilliant debut and a brilliant novel by any standards. André Brink has said: ‘Alastair Bruce is a consummate storyteller who appears well set to become a defining novelist of our time’. Alice by the outstanding German writer Judith Hermann is a work of great beauty. Hugo Hamilton said of it: ‘Alice has the breadth of an epic novel condensed into five interlinking stories which expand in small, haunting descriptions of life in the shadow of dying men.’ In November we publish Bruce Duffy’s Disaster Was My God, a tour de force of imagination, based on the astonishing life of Arthur Rimbaud, poet and arms dealer. Here are three wonderful books. May there be many more. Geoffrey Mulligan Publisher
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The Clerkenwell Press 3A Exmouth House Pine Street London EC1R 0JH 020 7841 6300 info@profilebooks.com www.profilebooks.com
Alice
The Clerkenwell Press
Judith Hermann A work of exceptional power and beauty from one of Europe’s finest writers When someone very close to you dies your whole life changes. Everything is different. Alice is the central figure in these five inter-connected narratives, which tell of her life at times of loss. Suddenly it is no longer possible to say what the person looked like, how he spoke, cursed, smiled, how he lived his life. Objects are left behind, books, letters, pictures, and every now and again you think you can see him in a crowd. Judith Hermann tells of days of transition, of waiting, of holding on and letting go – and of how clear and dazzling such days can sometimes be. Alice is a book of extraordinary power and great literary beauty from one of Europe’s finest writers. ‘The sheer energy and rhythm of her writing represents a new awakening in German literature as well as claiming a key place for her work internationally’ Hugo Hamilton ‘A master storyteller’ Independent
Judith Hermann was born in Berlin in 1970. She is the author of The Summer House, Later and Nothing but Ghosts which have received a number of literary awards, including the Kleist Prize. She lives and works in Berlin.
Fiction £8.99 Paperback with flaps 160pp ISBN: 9781846685293 eISBN: 9781847657473 August UK COM ex CAN Translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo
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Disaster Was My God
The Clerkenwell Press
Bruce Duffy
Based on the scandalous and astonishing life of the pioneering proto-punk Arthur Rimbaud In 1871, with a handful of startling poems, Arthur Rimbaud transformed himself from a teenage bumpkin into the literary sensation of Paris. He was taken up by the older, married poet Paul Verlaine in a passionate affair. When Rimbaud sought to end it, Verlaine, in a jealous rage, shot him. Shortly thereafter, Rimbaud, just shy of his twentieth birthday, declared himself finished with literature and became a prosperous trader and arms dealer. He died at thirty-seven. Bruce Duffy takes the bare facts of Rimbaud’s existence and conveys the inner turmoil of this calculating genius of outrage, whose work and untidy life did much to anticipate the twentieth century’s culture of rebellion. Bruce Duffy is the author of the The World As I Found It, a fictional life of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Last Comes The Egg. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
Fiction £14.99 Demy Trade Paperback 288pp ISBN: 9781846685279 eISBN: 9781846680014 November UK COM ex CAN
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Wall of Days
The Clerkenwell Press
Alastair Bruce
A stunning novel of guilt, loss and memory In a world all but drowned, a man called Bran has been living on an island for ten years. He was sent there in exile, and he tallies on the wall of his cave the days as they pass, until the day when something happens that kindles in Bran such memories and longing that he persuades himself to return, even if it means execution. His reception is so unexpected, so mystifying, that he casts about unsure of what is real and what imaginary. Only the friendship of a child anchors him as he retraces the terrible deeds for which he is answerable, and as he tries to reach back, over his biggest betrayal, to the one he loved.
‘A riveting and overwhelming story, told by a consummate storyteller who appears well set to become a defining novelist of our time’ André Brink
Alastair Bruce was born in Port Elizabeth and studied at the University of Cape Town where he started a science degree but ended with a masters in English Literature. He lives in the UK where he works in electronic publishing. He is married and has a daughter.
Fiction £11.99 Demy Trade Paperback 240pp ISBN: 9781846688003 eISBN: 9781847657701 August UK COM ex CAN, SA
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