SERPENT’S TAIL I
THE CLERKENWELL PRESS
I
TUSKAR ROCK PRESS
spring 2016
30
1986
2016
Contents 2–3 Under the Visible Life Kim Echlin 4 Superabundance Heinz Helle 5 The Natashas Yelena Moskovich 6–7 Iron Towns Anthony Cartwright 8 Sea Lovers Valerie Martin 9 Hotels of North America Rick Moody 10 The Little Communist Who Never Smiled Lola Lafon 11 ¡No Pasarán! Pete Ayrton 12–13 Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy Thrillers 14 I Love Dick Chris Kraus 15 László Krasznahorkai 16 Where Love Begins Judith Hermann 17 She Died Young Elizabeth Wilson 18 The Dressmaker Rosalie Ham 19 Fifteen Dogs André Alexis 20–21 Serpent’s Tail Classics 22–23 New in paperback 24 Recently published 25–27 Backlist 28–29 Contact information
Introduction
Serpent’s Tail an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
This year Serpent’s Tail is turning thirty and, while we have no intention of growing old gracefully, many of our books this season do share a preoccupation with how memories of youth can haunt us long after we should have left them behind. Two young people look for a way to truly be themselves in a strangely altered Paris. A German philosophy student struggles to be a man in New York. A footballer in the British midlands never lives up to his early promise. An Irish policeman refuses to act his age. The most precociously talented gymnast the world has ever seen copes with sudden fame. A generation of young writers take up arms in the Spanish Civil War.
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These stories have reminded us how fiercely our feelings burn when we’re young, and how when we get older we must fight to keep our flames from being extinguished. As we enter our fourth decade, we’re proud to be burning brighter than ever. Hannah Westland Publisher, Serpent’s Tail
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Under the Visible Life Kim Echlin
New title
‘A girl needs to figure out what she wants to do and have some nerve’ Katherine Goodnow, half Chinese and half Canadian, struggles through a 1950s childhood hostile to all she represents. Then, as a teenager, she discovers jazz. Her talent for the piano brings her freedom and helps her survive unexpected motherhood and her incurable love for the unreliable father of her children. Mahsa Weaver is sent to live with strict relatives in Karachi after the death of her beloved parents. She escapes to Montreal, but family ties are not so easily severed and she is forced into an arranged marriage. For Mahsa, too, music becomes her solace, allowing her to dream of a life that is really her own. When music brings Katherine and Mahsa together in New York, they begin a friendship that will change everything. Vividly rendered and sweeping in scope, Under the Visible Life is a meditation on how hope can remain alive in the darkest of times, if we have someone to share our burdens with. ‘I lost count of how many times I was caught off-guard by the poignancy of this novel. Every page pits hope against despair. Every page screams, fight for your dreams, you are lost without them. This story of motherhood and friendship, anchored by two extraordinary heroines, will stay with me for a long time’ Khaled Hosseini
Kim Echlin lives in Toronto. She is the author of Elephant Winter, Dagmar’s Daughter, Inanna: From the Myths of Ancient Sumer and The Disappeared, which was nominated for the Giller Prize and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction.
Fiction 320pp £12.99 Demy hardback ISBN: 978 1 78125 579 7 £11.99 Export paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 638 1 eISBN: 978 1 78283 219 5 February 2016 UK Com ex Can
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Superabundance Heinz Helle
Debut
Translated by Kári Driscoll
We can’t change who we are. But what if that makes life and love impossible? Alone in New York, separated from his girlfriend by the Atlantic Ocean, the narrator of Heinz Helle’s electric debut novel is sinking slowly into crisis. He loves his girlfriend but finds himself attracted to every woman he passes on the street. Totally self-aware yet unable to change his behaviour, he wonders at the ease with which everyone else seems to cope with life. Worse, his brain won’t stop its whirring analysis of the world around him, and it’s making any human interaction – watching football with friends, drinking with colleagues, comforting his girlfriend – all but impossible. Superabundance brings to life the philosophical struggles of everyday life, asking: how do we live when our relationships, our actions and even our own minds are filled with such terrible mystery?
Fiction £11.99 Demy paperback original with flaps 144pp ISBN: 9781781253953 eISBN: 9781782831297 February 2016 World English language US
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Heinz Helle was born in 1978. He studied philosophy in Munich and New York. He has worked as a copywriter for advertising agencies, and is a graduate of the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel. Superabundance is his first novel.
A debut novel with the philosophical heart of Milan Kundera’s The Remarkable Lightness of Being and the stark lyricism of Jon McGregor’s If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things Like Ben Lerner or Jenny Offill, Heinz Helle writes with striking honesty – but also refreshing directness – about modern life
The Serpent’s Natashas Tail Classics Yelena Moskovich
Debut
‘Beautiful, original and addictive – a stunning new voice’ Jenni Fagan Béatrice, a solitary young jazz singer from a genteel Parisian suburb, meets a mysterious woman named Polina. Polina visits her at night and whispers in her ear: ‘There are people who leave their bodies and their bodies go on living without them. These people are named Natasha.’ César, a lonely Mexican actor working in a call centre, receives the opportunity of a lifetime: a role as a serial killer on a French TV series. But as he prepares for the audition, he starts falling in love with the psychopath he is to play. Béatrice and César are drawn deeper into a city filled with visions and warnings, taunted by the chorusing of a group of young women, trapped in a windowless room, who all share the same name … Natasha.
A stunning literary debut with shades of Angela Carter and Haruki Murakami A startlingly original novel that recalls the unsettling visual worlds of Cindy Sherman and David Lynch
Yelena Moskovich was born in 1984 in the Ukraine and emigrated to the US with her family in 1991. She has studied at Emerson College, the Lecoq School of Physical Theatre and Université Paris 8. Her plays have been produced in the US, Vancouver, Paris, and Stockholm. She lives in Paris. The Natashas is her first novel.
Fiction £11.99 Demy paperback original with flaps 224pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 458 5 eISBN: 978 1 78283 163 1 January 2016 World all languages ex North America Tr
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Iron Towns
Anthony Cartwright
New title
The breakout novel from the award-winning author of How I Killed Margaret Thatcher The Iron Towns – once the furnace heart of industrial England; before that a deep-forested country of legend. Now the old steelworks are rusting away, and the town’s once great football club with them. Liam Corwen grew up here, and is playing out his career at Irontowns FC. The club’s history rests on his shoulders, but it is his own past that drags him down. Twenty years ago he and his friends had life stretching ahead of them: dreams of stardom, young marriages, money in their pockets. Iron Towns tells the story of Liam, his friends and his generation. But it is also a magisterial novel about the dreams of youth and industrial progress, from Bilbao to Eindhoven and Buenos Aires to Milan – and what happens when those dreams recede into the past. The Afterglow won a Betty Trask award; Heartland was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; and How I Killed Margaret Thatcher was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. An important novel of working-class culture reminiscent in scope to the work of David Peace
Anthony Cartwright was born in 1973 in Dudley. He worked as an English teacher in schools in London and the Midlands for over ten years, and is currenty a First Story writer-in-residence at Abbey Manor College in Lewisham. Iron Towns is his fourth novel.
Fiction £12.99 Demy hardback 320pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 538 4 eISBN: 978 1 78283 201 0 May 2016 World all languages US
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Sea Lovers Valerie Martin
New title
Wondrous beings and everyday monsters walk the pages of Orange Prize-winner Valerie Martin’s kaleidoscopic collection of stories Each of these twelve stories is a complete world, where ordinary lives are transformed, myths bloom into reality and the everyday is haunted by obsession and duplicity. A painter is made insufferable by success; a writer is driven to bury the evidence of his inadequacy. Metamorphosis fragments a marriage and beasts bear the consequences of human failings. Living creatures scratch out hauntings, rumours spread like fire. Fantastical beings are made flesh while mortals are engaged in a struggle that should be honourable but more often corrupts. Lyrical and macabre, Valerie Martin’s stories are wry and unexpected too. The question ‘Are we animals, or are we something else?’ is answered by an ancient proposition both whimsical and disturbing: we are neither and both.
Fiction £8.99 B format paperback original with flaps 336pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 555 1 eISBN: 978 1 78283 210 2 January 2016 UK Com ex Can
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Valerie Martin is the author of ten novels, including Property, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and Mary Reilly, which won the Kafka Prize. She has also written three collections of short fiction and a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi.
‘A writer of immense talent and insight’ Yann Martel ‘[Martin’s] writing – so prised and clean-limbed – is a marvel’ Toni Morrison
Hotels of North America Rick Moody
New title
The funny, inventive, moving new novel from the author of The Ice Storm Reginald Edward Morse is a man in need of an outlet. And he finds it in a very twenty-first century place: the internet. Specifically, RateYourLodging.com, where Americans go to find out the truth about hotels, motels and – horrors – bed and breakfasts. But the real joy of those sites is not so much the advice they offer as the people who offer it. Reginald Edward Morse is one of those people. At first Morse seems exactly what you suspect a reviewer to be, though under the authoritative, even puffed-up tone, there lurks self-awareness, wit and a flair for anecdote. His reviews scatter clues to his identity, and the fragments explain the mystery of Reginald Edward Morse, his career as a motivational speaker, his lover ‘K’ and his estrangement from his daughter. Always funny, unexpectedly tragic, this is a book of lonely rooms, long lists, of strong opinion and quiet confession, by one of America’s greatest novelists. ‘One of the most prodigiously talented writers in America’ Wall Street Journal ‘Moody makes sure we know when the laughs should hurt … never puts a foot wrong’ The New York Times
Rick Moody is the author of four previous novels, as well as an award-winning memoir and multiple collections of short fiction. Moody’s work has been anthologized in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Fiction £12.99 Demy hardback 288pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 581 0 eISBN: 978 1 78283 220 1 April 2016 UK Com ex Can
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The Little Communist Who Never Smiled Lola Lafon
New title
Translated by Nick Caistor
A novel telling the true story of Nadia Comăneci, icon of a lost age Montreal 1976. A fourteen-year-old girl steps out onto the middle of the floor at the Montreal Forum and into history. Twenty seconds on the uneven bars is all it takes for Nadia Comăneci, the slight, unsmiling child from Communist Romania, to etch herself into the collective memory. The electronic scoreboard, as astonished as the spectators, shows 1.00. The judges have awarded an unprecedented perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics. In The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, Lola Lafon tells the true story of Comăneci’s journey from rural Romania to her eventual defection to the United States in 1989. Adored by young girls in the West and appropriated as a political emblem by the Ceaușescu regime, Comăneci’s life was scrutinised wherever she went. Lafon’s novel is a powerful re-imagining of a childhood in the spotlight of history, politics and destiny.
Fiction £11.99 Demy paperback original 320pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 514 8 eISBN: 978 1 78283 190 7 June 2016 UK Com ex Can Exclusive Europe
Lola Lafon is a writer, musician, anarchist and feminist. The author of four novels, Lafon was born in France and grew up in Sofia and Bucharest. She lives in Paris.
Nadia Comăneci is a worldwide icon; published in time for the 2016 Olympics, The Little Communist Who Never Smiled will be a hit with literary readers, book clubs and lifelong gymnastics fans ‘A virtuoso blend of documentary and imagination … startling’ Nouvel Observateur Winner of the 2015 Prix Femina
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¡No Pasarán!
New title
Writings from the Spanish Civil War
Chosen and introduced by Pete Ayrton The essential prose of the twentieth century’s most emblematic conflict Hope, resignation, despair, humour, confusion, ruthlessness, compassion, generosity and love inhabit Pete Ayrton’s anthology of writings from the Spanish Civil War: there is little sense of certainty and still less of triumphalism among the bewilderingly diverse Republican and Nationalist coalitions, all shades of which are represented here. Previous collections privileged the writings of the International Brigades over those of the Spanish, sometimes excluding them altogether. ¡No Pasarán! corrects the balance: by far the largest contingent of its thirty-eight writers are Spanish, including Luis Buñuel, Manuel Rivas, Javier Cercas, Joan Sales and Manuel Chaves Nogales. The remainder offer contrasting perspectives of foreign participants in the conflict. These are hauntingly vivid stories from a bitterly fought war. This is writing of a high order that allows the reader to witness life behind and at the front lines of both sides. A truly international anthology, including Langston Hughes, Leonardo Sciascia, George Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Dos Passos, Victor Serge and Laurie Lee, among many others Ayrton’s First World War anthology No Man’s Land was praised as ‘trail-blazing’ (Independent), ‘impressive’ (Financial Times), ‘remarkable, wide-ranging’ (Herald), ‘a tribute to the art of translation ... marvellous’ (TLS) and ‘essential’ (The Times)
Pete Ayrton was born in London in 1943. After study and a brief period teaching philosophy, work as a translator led to a job as an editor with Pluto Press and later to his founding in 1986 of Serpent’s Tail. His acclaimed anthology of First World War writing No Man’s Land is also published by Serpent’s Tail.
Anthology £20 Royal hardback 480pp ISBN: 978 1 84668 997 0 eISBN: 978 1 78283 073 3 April 2015 World English language US
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Adrian McKinty
‘McKinty’s Troubles-set tales are becoming one of the great crime series … brilliant’ Sun
‘If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland, The Cold Cold Ground is what he would have written’ The Times
‘It blew my doors off’ Ian Rankin
‘Smart and irreverent’ Sunday Times
‘McKinty is firmly in the front rank of modern crime writers’ Daily Mail
Crime fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 84668 823 2 eISBN: 978 1 84765 795 4 June 2012 World ex USA, Can Exclusive Europe
Crime fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 84668 819 5 eISBN: 978 1 84765 929 3 January 2013 World ex USA, Can Exclusive Europe
Crime fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 84668 821 8 eISBN: 978 1 84765 931 6 June 2014 World ex USA, Can Exclusive Europe
Crime fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 84668 982 6 eISBN: 978 1 78283 051 1 July 2015 World ex USA, Can Exclusive Europe
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Rain Dogs
New title
A Sean Duffy Thriller
Adrian McKinty
Northern Ireland’s most charismatic detective inspector returns in the latest instalment of Adrian McKinty’s 100,000-copy-selling Sean Duffy Thrillers It’s just the same things over and again for Sean Duffy. Riot duty. Heartbreak. Cases he can solve but never get to court. But what detective gets two lockedroom mysteries in one career? When journalist Lily Bigelow is found dead in the courtyard of Carrickfergus castle, it looks like a suicide. But there are just a few things that bother Duffy enough to keep the case file open. Which is how he finds out that she was working on a devastating investigation of corruption and abuse at the highest levels of power in the UK and beyond. And so Duffy has two impossible problems on his desk: who killed Lily Bigelow? And what were they trying to hide?
‘Duffy always reminds me of one of Iain Banks’s jadedbut-idealistic narrator-heroes, and not just because of the protagonist’s taste for pharmaceutical-grade cocaine. Anyone missing their Banks fix should give McKinty a go’ Guardian ‘McKinty’s series is settling in as one of crime fiction’s most reliable attractions’ Mail on Sunday
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. His debut crime novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Dagger Award, and his Sean Duffy novels have won Spinetingler and Ned Kelly awards. He now lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Crime fiction £12.99 Royal paperback original 336pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 455 4 eISBN: 978 1 78283 162 4 January 2016 World ex USA, Can Exclusive Europe Tr
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I Love Dick Chris Kraus
The cult novel adored by feminists and fashionistas alike – never before published in the UK and available for the first time anywhere in hardback When Chris Kraus, an unsuccessful artist pushing forty, spends an evening with a rogue academic named Dick, she falls madly and inexplicably in love, enlisting her husband in her haunted pursuit. Dick proposes a kind of game between them, but when he fails to answer their letters Chris continues alone, transforming an adolescent infatuation into a new form of philosophy. Blurring the lines of fiction, essay and memoir, Chris Kraus’s novel was a literary sensation when it was first published in 1997. Widely considered to be the most important feminist novel of the past two decades, with fans as diverse as Lena Dunham, Sheila Heti, Kim Gordon, Leslie Jamison and Alexa Chung, I Love Dick is still essential reading; as relevant, fierce and funny as ever.
Fiction £12.99 B-format hardback 288pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 647 3 eISBN: 978 1 78283 254 6 November 2015 UK Com ex Can
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Chris Kraus is the author of the novels Aliens and Anorexia and Summer of Hate as well as the non-fiction books Video Green and Where Art Belongs, all published by Semiotext(e). A Professor of Writing at the European Graduate School, she writes for various magazines and lives in Los Angeles.
‘I know there was a time before I read Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick (in fact, that time was only five years ago), but it’s hard to imagine; some works of art do this to you. They tear down so many assumptions about what the form can handle (in this case, what the form of the novel can handle) that there is no way to re-create your mind before your encounter with them’ Sheila Heti
László Krasznahorkai, Man Booker International Prize winner, 2015
‘A visionary writer of extraordinary intensity’ ‘Throughout Krasznahorkai’s work, what strikes the reader above all are the extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths, their tone switching from solemn to madcap to quizzical to desolate as they go their wayward way; epic sentences that, like a lint roll, pick up all sorts of odd and unexpected things as they accumulate inexorably into paragraphs that are as monumental as they are scabrous and musical … ‘László Krasznahorkai is a visionary writer of extraordinary intensity and vocal range who captures the texture of present day existence in scenes that are terrifying, strange, appallingly comic and often shatteringly beautiful. [These] are magnificent works of deep imagination and complex passions, in which the human comedy verges painfully onto transcendence.’ Man Booker International Prize citation
Seiobo There Below
The Melancholy of Resistance
War & War
‘Glittering with ideas, provocations and the rhythms of life’ Guardian
‘Far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing’ W. G. Sebald
‘Drastically original’ Adam Thirlwell
Fiction May 2016 £8.99 B format paperback 464pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 511 7 eISBN: 978 1 78283 188 4 UK Com ex Can
Fiction May 2016 £8.99 B format paperback 320pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 624 4 eISBN: 978 1 78283 240 9 UK Com ex Can
Fiction May 2016 £8.99 B format paperback 288pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 623 7 eISBN: 978 1 78283 239 3 UK Com ex Can
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Where Love Begins Judith Hermann
Translated by Margaret Bettauer Dembo
THE CLERKENWELL PRESS
There is only a fine line between love and madness Stella lives with her young family in a house in the suburbs. Her life is happy and unremarkable, but she is a little lonely – her husband travels a lot for work and so she is often alone in the house with only her daughter for company. One day a stranger appears at her door, a man Stella’s never seen before. He says he just wants to talk to her, nothing more. She refuses. The next day he comes again. And the day after that. And the one after that. It is the beginning of a nightmare that slowly and remorselessly escalates. Where Love Begins is a delicately wrought, deeply sinister novel about how easily the comfortable lives we construct for ourselves can be shattered.
Fiction £10.99 Demy paperback original with flaps 224pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 470 7 eISBN: 978 1 78283 170 9 March 2016 UK Com ex Can
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Judith Hermann was born in Berlin in 1970. She is the author of The Summer House, Later, Nothing but Ghosts and Alice, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She lives and works in Berlin.
‘A finely crafted, perfectly sculpted psychological drama. Masterfully composed’ NDR Info ‘All the more precious for their transience, these glimpses of love, beauty and happiness brim with the small joys of life’ Independent Foreign Fiction Prize jury citation for Alice
She Died Young Elizabeth Wilson
New title
The Cold War is in full swing but DCI McGovern has more domestic concerns London, 1956. A young woman has been found dead in a hotel in King’s Cross. Looks like an accident, and Scotland Yard’s not interested in accidents. But Fleet Street journalist Gerry Blackstone thinks there’s more to it than that. Meanwhile, Oxford is filling with Hungarian émigrés fleeing the failed revolution. With the memories of Burgess and Maclean’s defection still raw, Special Branch is concerned that there could be Soviet spies among the genuine refugees and wants Jack McGovern on hand to keep an eye out. As McGovern carries out his casework in Oxford and Blackstone investigates the King’s Cross death in London, clues start to emerge that, somehow, the two cases might be linked. And underneath everything, there might be something even more sinister going on …
Blends the best of Wilson’s admired previous novels, with the Cold War machinations of The Girl in Berlin meeting the rigorous plotting and evocative 1950s London setting of War Damage Features memorable characters from Wilson’s other novels
Elizabeth Wilson is an independent researcher and writer. She is the author of several non-fiction books, including tennis history Love Game for Serpent’s Tail. Her previous novels The Twilight Hour, War Damage and The Girl in Berlin are all published by Serpent’s Tail.
Crime fiction £11.99 Demy paperback original 352pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 484 4 eISBN: 978 1 78283 177 8 March 2016 World all languages US
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The Dressmaker Rosalie Ham
Film tie-in
An unforgettable novel of love, hate and haute couture – now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth and Hugo Weaving, released in Autumn 2015 Tilly Dunnage left her hometown of Dungatar in rural Australia under a black cloud of accusation. Years later, Tilly, now a couturier for the Paris fashion houses, returns home to make amends with her mentally unstable mother. Mid-century Dungatar is a small town, and small towns have long memories. At first she wins over the suspicious locals with her extraordinary dressmaking skills. But when the eccentric townsfolk turn on Tilly for a second time, she decides to teach them a lesson and exact long-overdue revenge … Packed with memorable characters, acid humour and luscious clothes, The Dressmaker is an irresistible gothic tale of small-town vengeance.
Fiction £7.99 B format paperback 320pp ISBN: 978 1 84668 994 9 eISBN: 978 1 78283 071 9 October 2015 UK Com ex Can & ANZ
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Rosalie Ham is the author of The Dressmaker, Summer at Mount Hope and There Should be More Dancing. She was born and raised in Jerilderie, New South Wales, and now lives in Melbourne.
‘Ham writes delightfully … her eye for the absurd, the comical and the poignant are highly tuned … one to savour and enjoy’ Weekend Australian ‘Blessed with a talent for creating memorably eccentric characters, Ham also possesses a confidently brisk and mischievous sense of plot’ Sydney Morning Herald
Fifteen Dogs André Alexis
New title
A pack of dogs are granted the power of human thought – but what will it do to them? It begins in a bar, like so many strange stories. The gods Hermes and Apollo argue about what would happen if animals had human intelligence, so they make a bet that leads them to grant consciousness and language to a group of fifteen dogs. Suddenly capable of complex thought, the dogs are torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old ‘dog’ ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into unfamiliar territory, struggling with new thoughts and feelings. Full of unexpected insights into human and canine minds, this contemporary take on the apologue is the most extraordinary book you’ll read this year.
‘Over the course of this novel, slim yet epic in scope, Alexis chronicles the fates of these strangely afflicted beasts, shifting from thought experiment to comic parable to something more delicate, laden with detail, discovery and emotional nuance’ Globe & Mail
André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His debut novel Childhood won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. His other books include Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid & the Wolf and Pastoral.
Fiction £7.99 B-format paperback original with flaps 160pp ISBN: 978 1 78125 558 2 eISBN: 978 1 78283 211 9 November 2015 UK Com ex Can Exclusive Europe
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Serpent’s Tail Classics Cult masterpieces that have changed the way we see the world Pete Ayrton founded Serpent’s Tail in 1986 to introduce British readers to risk-taking world literature no one else in the UK was publishing. Serpent’s Tail quickly established a reputation for fearlessness, and for discovering an eclectic range of ground-breaking fiction and non-fiction. Now in our thirtieth year, we continue to publish books that we think matter, whether they are literary novels or crime fiction, works in translation or non-fiction books on contemporary culture and politics. Whether it’s Albertine Sarrazin’s 60s tale of youthful rebellion Astragal, Lester Bangs’ missives from the punk-rock frontline in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, Jean Patrick-Manchette’s razor-sharp Marxist satire Fatale or David Gates’ bravura story of a man drinking himself into oblivion in Jernigan, these books still burn as fiercely as they did on first publication. From Pedro Páramo’s Mexican ghost town to the isolated Japanese village of The Silent Cry, Serpent’s Tail Classics are a wild ride into the darker corners of the map. For more information visit www.serpentstail.com/serpents-tail-classics
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The Silent Cry Kenzaburo Ōe
We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver
‘An extraordinary work’ Kazuo Ishiguro
The Orange Prize-winning, million-copy bestseller
Fiction £8.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 565 0 eISBN: 978 1 84765 773 2 June 2016 World ex North America, Japan
Fiction £8.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 567 4 eISBN: 978 1 84765 174 7 January 2016 UK Com ex Can
Serpent’s Tail Classics – now available
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New in paperback
Gone to Ground Marie Jalowicz Simon
The Evening Chorus Helen Humphreys
Pleasantville Attica Locke
Saint Mazie Jami Attenberg
In the Night of Time Antonio Muñoz Molina
‘A spectacularly resilient, resourceful and singularly brave woman’ Jewish Chronicle
‘A poised, lyrical novel about the griefs of war, written with poetic intensity of observation’ Helen Dunmore
‘Riveting courtroom drama … [Locke] is already the equal of such writers as John Grisham’ Independent
‘Captures Mazie’s voice so vividly you can close the book and still hear her talking … you sure won’t forget her in a hurry’ Guardian
‘One of the most eloquent monuments to the Spanish Civil War ever raised in fiction’ Washington Post
Memoir £8.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 415 8 eISBN: 978 1 78283 138 9 February 2016 World ex North America
Fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 303 8 eISBN: 978 1 78283 087 0 April 2016 UK Com ex Can
Fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 84668 949 9 eISBN: 978 1 84765 977 4 April 2016 UK Com ex Can
Fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 84668 992 5 eISBN: 978 1 78283 069 6 February 2016 UK Com ex Can
Fiction £9.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 509 4 eISBN: 978 1 78283 167 9 April 2016 UK Com ex Can
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New in paperback
Glass Alex Christofi
All Day Long Joanna Biggs
The Winter War Philip Teir
After Me Comes the Flood Sarah Perry
Cowboys & Indies Gareth Murphy
‘Christofi’s writing really does gleam with wit, inventiveness and an offbeat charm’ The Times
‘A bravura study of our working nation … a subtle, observant, quiet, devastating book’ Independent
‘Teir’s slanted view of family dynamics is inventive, solidy crafted and highly entertaining’ Herald
‘A dark, marvellous novel … bask in a dazzling new writing talent’ Sunday Telegraph
‘A fascinating trawl through music industry history’ The Times
Debut fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 84668 968 0 eISBN: 978 1 78283 024 5 March 2016 World all languages
Debut non-fiction £8.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 188 1 eISBN: 978 1 78283 014 6 January 2016 World English language
Debut fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 489 9 eISBN: 978 1 78283 070 2 August 2015 World ex North America
Debut fiction £7.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 364 9 eISBN: 978 1 84668 946 8 June 2015 World ex USA
Music £9.99 B format paperback ISBN: 978 1 78125 435 6 eISBN: 978 1 78283 159 4 December 2015 UK Com ex Can
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Recently published
A Hand Reached Down Death by Video Game to Guide Me David Gates Simon Parkin
Boy on the Wire Alastair Bruce
Leonora Elena Poniatowska
Am I Cold Martin Kongstad
‘Entertaining, gripping, astute, painful, wise, outrageous and funny – all at the same time’ Geoff Dyer
‘The finest book on video games yet … Parkin writes like an artist at the height of his powers’ Tom Bissell
‘A consummate storyteller who appears well set to become a defining novelist of our time’ André Brink
‘How Poniatowska’s magnetic heroine rebels … enormously enjoyable’ Independent
‘This autumn’s funniest and most provocative book about relationships’ Elle
Fiction £12.99 Demy paperback original ISBN: 978 1 78125 491 2 eISBN: 978 1 78283 180 8 August 2015 UK Com ex Can
Debut non-fiction £12.99 Demy paperback original ISBN: 978 1 78125 421 9 eISBN: 978 1 78283 143 3 August 2015 World all languages
Fiction £12.99 Demy hardback ISBN: 978 1 78125 454 7 eISBN: 978 1 78283 161 7 August 2015 World all languages ex South Africa
Fiction £12.99 Demy paperback original ISBN: 978 1 84668 855 3 eISBN: 978 1 84765 827 2 March 2015 UK Com ex Can (Exclusive Europe)
Debut fiction £12.99 Demy paperback original ISBN: 978 1 78125 333 5 eISBN: 978 1 78283 100 6 November 2015 World English language
US
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US
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Backlist
978 1 84668 966 6
£7.99
978 1 84668 776 1 e 978 1 84765 656 8 £7.99
978 1 84668 963 5
978 1 84668 907 9
978 1 84668 753 2
978 1 78125 549 0
e 978 1 84765 971 2
e 978 1 84765 868 5
e 978 1 84765 264 5
e 978 1 78283 208 9
£7.99
£7.99
£7.99
£7.99
978 1 84668 734 1 e 978 1 84765 174 7 £7.99
978 1 84668 957 4 e 978 1 78283 009 2 £7.99
978 1 84668 935 2
978 1 84668 738 9
e 978 1 84765 943 9
e 978 1 84765 311 6
£7.99
978 1 78125 278 9 e 978 1 78283 076 4 £8.99
978 1 78125 283 3 e 978 1 78283 080 1 £8.99
e 978 1 78283 020 7 £7.99
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Backlist
978 1 84668 944 4
£7.99
978 1 84668 784 6 e 978 1 84765 161 7 £7.99
978 1 84668 976 5
978 1 78125 391 5
978 1 84668 705 1
978 1 84668 662 7
e 978 1 78283 029 0
e 978 1 78283 127 3
e 978 1 84765 498 4
e 978 1 84765 484 7
£7.99
£7.99
£8.99
£7.99
978 1 84668 739 6 e 978 1 84765 310 9 £7.99
978 1 84668 735 8 e 978 1 84765 237 9 £8.99
978 1 84668 737 2
978 1 84668 756 3
e 978 1 84765 306 2
e 978 1 84765 307 9
£7.99
978 1 84668 683 2 £7.99
978 1 84668 736 5 £7.99
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e 978 1 84765 969 9 £8.99
Backlist
978 1 84668 973 4
£8.99
978 1 85242 489 3 e 978 1 84765 216 4 £8.99
978 1 84668 851 5
978 1 84668 956 7
978 1 84668 911 6
978 1 84668 980 2
978 1 84765 825 8
e 978 1 84765 993 4
e 978 1 84765 878 4
e 978 1 78283 038 2
£10.99
£9.99
£9.99
£8.99
978 1 84668 961 1 e 978 1 84765 981 1 £8.99
978 1 84668 926 0 e 978 1 84765 922 4 £9.99
978 1 84668 760 0
978 1 84668 990 1
e 978 1 84765 649 0
e 978 1 78283 068 9
£12.99
978 1 84668 839 3 e 978 1 84765 784 8 £5.99
978 1 84668 742 6 £9.99
e 978 1 78283 028 3 £8.99
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Catalogue cover: Peter Dyer Catalogue artwork: Two Associates
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