serpent's tail catalogue spring 2015
DESCRIPTION
Browse our brilliant titles coming out spring/summer 2015 from the publishers of the Man Booker Prize 2014-shortlisted We Are All Completely Beside OurselvesTRANSCRIPT
SERPENT’S TAIL THE CLERKENWELL PRESS TUSKAR ROCK PRESS
020 7841 6300 www.serpentstail.com@serpentstail www.theclerkenwellpress.com
S E R PE N T’S TAIL S P R I N G 2 0 1 5
➸SERPENT’S TAIL I THE CLERKENWELL PRESS I TUSK AR ROCK PRESS
Contents
2–3 Gone to Ground Marie Jalowicz Simon4–5 All Day Long Joanna Biggs6 Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy Thrillers7 Gun Street Girl Adrian McKinty8 Glass Alex Christofi9 The Winter War Philip Teir10 Fatale Jean-Patrick Manchette11 The Gunman Jean-Patrick Manchette12 The Evening Chorus Helen Humphreys 13 Leonora Elena Poniatowska14–15 Pleasantville Attica Locke16 Cowboys and Indies Gareth Murphy17 The Moth introduced by Neil Gaiman18 The Lights of Pointe-Noire Alain Mabanckou19 A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines20 The Seven Madmen Roberto Arlt21 Serpent’s Tail Classics22–23 Introducing Tuskar Rock Press 24–25 In the Night of Time Antonio Muñoz Molina26–27 Recently published and new in paperback28–31 Backlist32–33 Contact information
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Catalogue cover: Peter Dyer Catalogue artwork: Two Associates
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Introduction
Work is a fact of life. But sometimes just staying alive is a job in itself.
Marie Jalowicz Simon was a young Jew in 1930s Berlin who realised her best chance of staying alive was to go underground, where she stayed until the war was over. Before she died, she decided to tell this story for the first time. The resulting memoir, Gone to Ground, which we’ll publish in March, is the most extraordinary account of survival I have ever read.
This season we also have dazzling debut fiction with Alex Christofi’s Glass, a tale of a milkman turned window-cleaner in search of happiness, and Philip Teir’s The Winter War, a Franzen-like dissection of the Scandinavian dream. And non-fiction in the shape of Joanna Biggs’s sweeping survey of contemporary Britain at work, All Day Long. From cleaners to bankers, nurses to entrepreneurs, as we hurtle towards the General Election in April her book asks: are we really all in this together?
Hannah WestlandPublisher
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THE CLERKENWELL PRESS
Gone to Ground Marie Jalowicz SimonTranslated by Anthea Bell
Thrilling and terrifying, this is the gripping true account of a young Jewish woman who survived World War Two by going to ground in Berlin
In 1941, Marie Jalowicz Simon, a nineteen-year-old Jewish Berliner, made an extraordinary decision. All around her, Jews were being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie took off the yellow star and vanished into the city.
In the years that followed, Marie lived under an assumed identity, forced to accept shelter wherever she found it. Always on the move, never certain who she could trust, Marie moved between almost twenty different safehouses, living with foreign workers, committed communists and even convinced Nazis. It was only her fierce determination and amazing strokes of luck which kept her alive. This is Marie’s extraordinary story, told with unflinching honesty after more than fifty years of silence.
Reminiscent of Hans Fallada’s bestselling classic Alone in Berlin, Gone to Ground is an unheard testimony of a precarious life and everyday acts of resistance.
‘Takes us deep into Berlin, where meanness and helpfulness, squalor and great heartedness kept close quarters ... a mad journey into the reality that lies beyond the radar of history’s great words and broad brushstrokes’ Berliner Zeitung
Marie Jalowicz Simon (1922–98) was born in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family. She escaped the ghettos and concentration camps that claimed so many lives during the Second World War by living in hiding in Berlin. Shortly before her death, her son recorded her telling her story for the first time.
Memoir£14.99Demy hardback 368ppISBN: 9781781254141eISBN: 9781782831389March 2015World ex USA, CanExclusive Europe
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All Day LongA Portrait of Britain at WorkJoanna Biggs
Hear the voices of Britain’s workforce – rich and poor, native and immigrant, women and men – showing us who we are through what we do
Nearly all of us have to work, but how much do we really know about what other people actually do all day? What is it really like to be a fishmonger, a sex worker or an orthodox rabbi? Or, for that matter, a banker, research scientist or advertising exec? How do our jobs colour our life, beliefs and happiness? And what happens to how we feel about work in a recession?
In All Day Long, Joanna Biggs has travelled the length and breadth of Britain to find the answers, along the way talking to interns and bosses, professionals and entrepreneurs, thinkers and doers. Her journey takes us from Westminster to the Outer Hebrides, from a hospital in Wales to the industrial Midlands, introducing us to the different worlds of work and the people who inhabit them.
A fascinating and revealing exploration of the time we spend at work and what it means, in the mould of Craig Taylor’s Londoners and Studs Terkel’s Working
Combines genuine empathy with social, cultural and political awareness
Joanna Biggs is a writer and editor at the London Review of Books, where she has reported on the student protest movement, the recession in Middlesbrough, legal aid cuts, censorship in China and food banks. She was born in London.
@joannabiggs
Non-fiction / Oral history£14.99Demy hardback352ppISBN: 9781781251874eISBN: 9781782830146April 2015World English language
US
Debut
6
The Cold Cold Ground
‘If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland, The Cold Cold Ground is what he would have written’ The Times
Crime fiction£7.99 B format paperback352pp ISBN: 9781846688232eISBN: 9781847657954June 2012World ex USA, Can
I Hear the Sirens in the Street
‘It blew my doors off’ Ian Rankin
Crime fiction£7.99 B format paperback352pp ISBN: 9781846688195eISBN: 9781847659293January 2014World ex USA, Can
‘Duffy is one of the most interesting, convincing and sympathetic police officers in recent crime fiction … McKinty gets better and better’ The Times
‘A strain of rough and visual, sly and lyric narrative prose in service of one hell of a story. Sean Duffy is a great creation’ Daniel Woodrell
‘Duffy is crass and impetuous, but also wickedly funny and capable of an intense, redeeming empathy’ Guardian
‘McKinty is firmly in the front rank of modern crime writers’ Daily Mail
‘McKinty is as good as any novelist around. His lovely flair for language is matched by his feel for place, his appetite for redemptive violence leavened by some seriously mordant wit and his seriously cool appreciation of characters who reject conformity’ Weekend Australian
‘McKinty’s series is settling in as one of crime fiction’s most reliable attractions’ Mail on Sunday
In the Morning I’ll Be Gone
‘Smart and irreverent’ Sunday Times
Crime fiction £7.99 B format paperback336pp ISBN: 9781846688218eISBN: 9781847659316June 2014World ex USA, Can
Now available in paperbackAdrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy Thrillers
Tr TrTr
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Tr
Gun Street GirlA Sean Duffy ThrillerAdrian McKinty
Fast-paced, sharply written, super-cool and full of dark humour
Belfast, 1985. Gunrunners on the borders, riots in the cities, ‘The Power of Love’ on the radio. And somehow, in the middle of it all, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy is hanging on, a Catholic policeman in the hostile Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Duffy is initially left cold by the murder of a wealthy couple, shot dead while watching TV. And when their troubled son commits suicide, leaving a note that appears to take responsibility for the deaths, it seems the case is closed. But something doesn’t add up, and people keep dying. Soon Duffy is on the trail of a mystery that will pit him against shadowy US intelligence forces and take him into the white-hot heart of the biggest political scandal of the decade.
‘McKinty has rightly developed an international reputation with his stories of the Troubles in Ulster focused around the edgy, belligerent Detective Inspector Sean Duffy … firmly in the front rank of modern crime writers’ Daily Mail
Sean Duffy is like Ian Rankin’s Rebus – but younger, sexier, funnier and more outrageous
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Northern Ireland, and now lives in Melbourne, Australia. His first Sean Duffy novel The Cold Cold Ground won the 2013 Spinetingler Award and its sequel I Hear the Sirens in the Street was shortlisted for the 2013 Ned Kelly Award.
www.adrianmckinty.com
@adrianmckinty
Crime fiction£12.99 Royal trade paperback336ppISBN: 9781846689819eISBN: 9781782830511January 2015World ex USA, CanExclusive Europe
New Title
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GlassAlex Christofi
A charming, comic tale of a young man finding his way in the modern world
Glass is pure. Glass is transparent. Glass is sharp. Günter Glass, ex-milkman and aspiring window-cleaner, is certainly pure. And he’s pretty transparent. But the jury’s still out on how sharp he is. What naïve young Günter does have is a head for heights. So when he is called to window-cleaning’s most glamorous job – to clean the newly constructed Shard in London – he suddenly finds himself leaving the comfort of provincial Salisbury.
Enchantingly unprepared for the bright lights of the city – and philosophically underequipped for sharing a flat with an eccentric German savant called the Steppenwolf – Günter must navigate his way along the straight and narrow using just his mother’s homespun wisdom and the knowledge gleaned from haphazard wanderings through Wikipedia. But will his innocence put him on a collision course with the baffling modern world?
With the boyish charm of Huckleberry Finn and the satirical edge of Candide – but with added window-cleaning – Glass will appeal to readers of Mark Haddon, Graeme Simsion and Maria Semple
Alex Christofi was born and grew up in Dorset. After reading English at the University of Oxford, he moved to London to work in publishing. He has written a number of short pieces for theatre, and blogs about arts and culture for Prospect magazine. Glass is his first novel.
@alex_christofi
Fiction£12.99Demy hardback240ppISBN: 9781846689673eISBN: 9781782830245February 2015World all languages ex USAExclusive Europe
Tr
Debut
9US
The Winter WarPhilip TeirTranslated by Tiina Nunnally
A wise and funny family drama by Scandinavia’s answer to Jonathan Franzen
On the surface, the Paul family are living the liberal, middle-class Scandinavian dream. Max Paul is a renowned sociologist and his wife Katriina has a well-paid job in the public sector. They live in an airy apartment in the centre of Helsinki. But look closer and the cracks start to show.
As he approaches his sixtieth birthday, the certainties of Max’s life begin to dissolve. He hasn’t produced any work of note for decades. His wife no longer loves him. His grown-up daughters – one in London, one in Helsinki – have problems of their own. So when a journalist shows up and offers him a seductive lifeline, Max starts down a path from which he may never find a way back. Funny and razor-sharp, Teir’s debut has the feel of a big, contemporary, humane American novel, but with a distinctly Scandinavian edge.
Unravels the fantasy we have of perfect Scandinavian society
‘Somewhere between Richard Yates and John Updike, but with a cooler Nordic temperament’ Expressen
Finland-Swede Philip Teir is considered one of the most promising young writers in Scandinavia. His poetry and short stories have been included in anthologies, including Granta Finland. He lives in Helsinki. The Winter War is his first novel.
#scanzen
Fiction320pp£12.99 Demy hardbackISBN: 9781781254882£11.99 Export trade paperbackISBN: 9781846689932eISBN: 9781782830702January 2015World English language
Debut
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FataleJean-Patrick Manchette Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smithand with a new foreword by David Peace
Small-town politics can be vicious
Aimée Joubert is a drop-dead gorgeous femme fatale with a penchant for bloody murder. Ever on the lookout for opportunities for self-enrichment, she finds plenty to like as a newcomer to the detestable backwater town of Bléville: self-interested parish politics, rampant corruption, dormant grudges, scandals just waiting to be uncovered – yes, there’s a killing to be made here.
So Aimée starts to wreak her stylish mayhem on Bléville’s despicable bourgeoisie. But just when she’s ready to take them all to the cleaners, something snaps, and the master manipulator falls prey to her wayward passions. A tornado of redemptive murder and a gleeful satire of small-town life, Fatale is Manchette’s bloodiest, funniest and most riotously enjoyable thriller yet.
‘France’s king of noir fiction … he writes with a bleak, tragic beauty’ The Times
‘A fist between the eyes, leaving the reader reeling … so devastating it takes your breath away’ Complete Review
Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942–95) was a genre-redefining French crime novelist, screenwriter, critic and translator. David Peace is the prize-winning author of the Red Riding Quartet, The Damned Utd, Red or Dead and three other novels.
Crime fiction£8.99B format paperback 112ppISBN: 9781781253892eISBN: 9781782831266February 2015UK Com ex Can Exclusive Europe
Classic
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The Gunman Jean-Patrick ManchetteTranslated by James Brook
Now a major film starring Sean Penn, Javier Bardem and Idris Elba
Deadly professional assassin Martin Terrier returns to Paris after his latest job, determined to get out of the game. Ten years ago he made a promise to go back to his childhood sweetheart in the south of France. But circumstances put Martin’s attempted retirement on hold: a key target is flying in to Paris, and there is only one man fit for the task of eliminating him. As Martin flees southwards, desperate to return to the quiet mediocrity of small-town romance, he finds his former employers will stop at nothing to regain his services for one last job…
Bursting with gallic irony and visceral brutality, The Gunman (originally published in English as The Prone Gunman) is a shocking and sardonic masterpiece from the late, great master of the French crime novel.
‘One of the last cool, compact and shockingly original crime novels’ New York Times Book Review
‘Stylish and uncompromising … a short sharp shock of a novel’ Daily Telegraph
‘Manchette turns pulp fiction into art’ Independent
Manchette’s first novel was published in 1971; The Gunman, his masterpiece, in 1981. In the decade which intervened he published a further eight novels. The Gunman, along with Fatale and Three to Kill, completes the loose trilogy of ultra-stylish, subtly subversive crime thrillers which made his name.
Crime fiction£7.99 B format paperback128ppISBN: 9781781253915eISBN: 9781782831273Ferbuary 2015UK Com ex CanExclusive Europe
Film tie-in
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The Evening ChorusHelen Humphreys
‘A poised, lyrical novel about the griefs of war, written with poetic intensity of observation’ Helen Dunmore
Shot down on his first RAF mission, James Hunter spends the Second World War in a German prison camp. While other soldiers plan their escapes, James dedicates himself to a detailed study of nesting redstarts.
Left behind in their tiny cottage on the lip of Sussex’s Ashdown Forest, and unable to engage with his letters which talk of nothing but birds, James’s young wife Rose has grown apart from him. Now she’s in love with someone else – Toby, a young pilot home on sick leave. They meet secretly at night, until suddenly and devastatingly their affair ends. Beautifully written and full of moments of hope, The Evening Chorus is a stirring story about love and the natural world, set against the backdrop of World War Two.
‘The Evening Chorus serenades those people brutally marked by war yet enduring to live – and relish – the tiny pleasures of another day. With her trademark prose Humphreys convinces us of the birdlike strength of the powerless’ Emma Donoghue
For fans of Pat Barker, Atonement, Birdsong and William Nicholson
Helen Humphreys was born in London, England, and now lives in Kingston, Ontario. Her first novel, Leaving Earth, was a New York Times Notable Book and won the City of Toronto Book Award. She is also the author of the novel The Reinvention of Love and the memoir True Story: On the Life and Death of My Brother.
Fiction£11.99Demy trade paperback with flaps304ppISBN: 9781781253021eISBN: 9781782830870May 2015UK Com ex Can
New Title
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LeonoraElena PoniatowskaTranslated by Amanda Hopkinson
Inspired by the life of the great surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, Leonora is The Girl with the Pearl Earring meets Patrick White’s The Vivisector
Leonora Carrington was born in Lancashire in 1917, the wealthy heiress to her father’s textiles empire. But even from a young age she rebelled against the strict rules of her social class, and broke free into artistic and personal freedom. Today Carrington is recognised as the key female surrealist painter.
For a time Max Ernst’s lover in Paris, Carrington rubbed elbows with Salvador Dalí, André Breton and Pablo Picasso. When Ernst fled Paris at the outbreak of the Second World War, the devastated Carrington was locked away in a Spanish asylum before escaping to Mexico, where she would work on the paintings which made her name. In the hands of Mexico’s greatest living writer, Carrington’s life becomes a whirlwind tribute to creative struggle and artistic revolution.
‘Masterful … Poniatowska paints a picture of a troubled woman who personifies the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century’ Biblioteca Breve Prize citation
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of Carrington’s work at Tate Liverpool in 2015
Elena Poniatowska was born in Paris in 1932. Poniatowska is one of the world’s most celebrated writers, amongst whose countless awards are the Biblioteca Breve Prize for Leonora and the 2013 Cervantes Prize. For over fifty years she was a close friend of Leonora Carrington’s, until the artist’s death in 2011.
Fiction £12.99Demy trade paperback448ppISBN: 9781846688553eISBN: 9781847658272April 2015UK Com ex CanExclusive Europe
New Title
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Black Water RisingAttica Locke
‘Black Water Rising is a terrifying reminder of how recently America was a very bad place to be young, gifted and black. This is an authentic, atmospheric debut that burns with an entirely reasonable anger’ Val McDermid
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize and nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Crime fiction£7.99B format paperback 448ppISBN: 9781846687532eISBN: 9781847652645April 2010UK Com ex Can
The Cutting SeasonAttica Locke
‘Attica Locke is stand-out in every way’ James Ellroy
‘Genuinely unnerving ... interested in subtle, complex questions of identity, family and history’ Daily Mail
Crime fiction£7.99B format paperback432ppISBN: 9781846688041eISBN: 9781847658500July 2013UK Com ex Can
Paperback
Paperback
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PleasantvilleAttica Locke
Murder and political intrigue combine in the thrilling third novel from the Orange Prize shortlisted author of Black Water Rising
It’s 1996, Bill Clinton has just been re-elected and in Houston a mayoral election is looming. As usual the campaign focuses on Pleasantville, the African-American neighbourhood that has swung almost every race in recent memory.
Axel Hathorne, former chief of police and the son of Pleasantville’s founding father, was the clear favourite, but his lead is slipping thanks to a late entrant into the race. As the competition intensifies, a girl goes missing, apparently while canvassing for Axel. When her body is found, Axel’s nephew is charged with her murder. The Hathornes turn to local attorney Jay Porter. And so he finds himself trying his first murder case – a trial that threatens to blow the community wide open, and reveal the lengths that those with power are willing to go.
‘I was first struck by Attica Locke’s prose, then by the ingenuity of her narrative and finally and most deeply by the depth of her humanity. She writes with equal amounts of grace and passion … I’d probably read the phone book if her name was on the spine’ Dennis Lehane
A page-turning courtroom drama rife with politics, corruption, betrayal and conflicted characters for fans of Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke, The Wire and The Killing
Attica Locke is the author of two previous novels, Black Water Rising and The Cutting Season, and has worked as a screenwriter for Paramount, Warner Bros, Twentieth Century Fox and Dreamworks. A native of Houston, Texas, Locke lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
@atticalocke
Literary thriller432pp£14.99 Royal hardbackISBN: 9781846689482£12.99 Export trade paperbackISBN: 9781781254097eISBN: 9781847659774April 2015UK Com ex Can
New Title
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Cowboys and IndiesThe epic history of the record industryGareth Murphy
‘If this book was a group, I would definitely sign them. It is that good’ Geoff Travis, founder of Rough Trade
From the invention of the earliest known sound-recording device in 1850s Paris to the CD crash and digital boom, Cowboys and Indies takes us on a wildly entertaining tour of the ever-changing music industry, introducing us along the way to the performers and self-proclaimed ‘record men’ of the UK and America.
Industry insider Gareth Murphy draws on archival material and over 100 exclusive interviews with legends of the music business to bring us the behind-the-scenes stories of the most important recordings of the past 150 years, including Billie Holiday, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and many, many more. Cowboys and Indies is the definitive history of the music business.
Interviewees include the founders and CEOs of Virgin Records, United Artists, Atlantic Records and A&M, who made artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley and The Sex Pistols household names
‘A fascinating account of the way recorded music has evolved, touched people and helped shape popular culture as we know it today’ Sir George Martin, legendary producer of The Beatles
Gareth Murphy was raised in Dublin surrounded by the musicians his father worked with as a concert promoter. He has worked at various record companies, and composes and produces music. He runs his own company, Atlantis Recordings. Murphy lives in Paris with his wife and son.
Music£14.99Royal trade paperback384ppISBN: 9781781254523eISBN: 9781782831594January 2015UK Com ex Can
New Title
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The MothThis is a true storyIntroduced by Neil Gaiman
A spell-binding collection of true stories
Before television, before penny paperbacks and mass literacy, people would gather around the fire and tell stories. Bewitched listeners would sit and listen long into the night as moths flitted around overhead. The Moth is a group trying to recapture this lost art, helping storytellers – old hands and novices alike – hone their stories before playing to packed crowds at sold-out live events.
The very best of these real-life stories are collected here. Established writers such as Malcolm Gladwell and Nathan Englander sit alongside ordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell. Whether it’s Bill Clinton’s hell-raising press secretary, a doctor whisked away by nuns to Mother Teresa’s bedside or a friend of Hemingway’s who accidentally talks himself into a role as a substitute bullfighter, these eccentric, pitch-perfect stories – all, amazingly, true – range from the poignant to the downright hilarious.
‘Brilliant and quietly addictive … crammed with personality … full of colour and life’ Guardian
‘One of the hottest events in town … enthralling, funny and moving’ The Times
‘New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket’ Wall Street Journal
The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the art of storytelling. Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of stories, told live and without notes, to packed-out audiences worldwide. Moth shows are renowned for the great range of human experience they showcase.
@TheMoth
Non-fiction£9.99B format paperback400ppISBN: 9781846689901eISBN: 9781782830689May 2015UK Com ex Can
New Paperback
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US
The Lights of Pointe-NoireAlain Mabanckou Translated by Helen Stevenson
A meditation on homecoming from one of Africa’s most important writers
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989. When he returns home two decades later to the bustling Congolese port town of Pointe-Noire, he finds a country in some ways changed beyond recognition: the cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on American culture has become a Pentecostal temple; his secondary school has been re-named in honour of a previously despised colonial ruler.
But many things remain unchanged, not least the superstitions which inform everyday life. Mabanckou, now a celebrated writer, finds he can only look on as an outsider at the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into memories of his departed mother and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to Congo, Mabanckou slowly builds a wise, wry, moving exploration of the way home never leaves us, however long ago we left.
‘Mabanckou is one of the continent’s greatest writers’ Guardian
‘One of Africa’s liveliest and most original voices’ The Times
Mabanckou’s profound insight into Africa past and present will appeal to readers of Ryszard Kapuściński, Paul Theroux and Chinua Achebe
Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in the Republic of the Congo. An award-winning novelist, poet and essayist, Mabanckou now lives in Los Angeles. His novels African Psycho, Broken Glass, Black Bazaar and Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty are published by Serpent’s Tail.
@amabanckou
Memoir£8.99 B format trade paperback224ppISBN: 9781846689802eISBN: 9781782830382May 2015World English language
New Title
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A Lesson Before DyingErnest J. Gaineswith a new foreword by Attica Locke
An award-winning novel of prejudice, community and what it means to be a man in the American South
In a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, a young black man named Jefferson witnesses a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed. The only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
In the tradition of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Gaines explores the deep prejudice of the American South. A Lesson Before Dying is a richly compassionate and deeply moving novel, the story of a young black man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit and a teacher who hopes to ease his burden before the execution.
‘Gaines has created a powerful and loving portrait of a small, mainly cane-cutting community … a transcendent and heartfelt novel of redemption’ Guardian
‘Straight and true, unafraid of sentiment and written for the people it depicts, not simply about them’ Independent
Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. A Lesson Before Dying won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was nominated for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize. He still lives in Louisiana.
Fiction£8.99 B format paperback272ppISBN: 9781846687860eISBN: 9781847655448April 2015UK Com ex Can, Aus
Classic
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The Seven MadmenRoberto ArltTranslated by Nick Caistorand with a new afterword by Roberto Bolaño
An extraordinary portrait of 1920s Buenos Aires, with the existential angst of Sartre’s Nausea, the spiritual drama of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and the apocalyptic cult appeal of Alan Moore’s Watchmen.
Remo Erdosain’s Buenos Aires is a seething hive of hustlers, scoundrels and madmen. Trapped between spiritual emptiness and the madness of the world around him, Erdosain clings to anything that can give his life meaning: small-time fraud, petty hatreds, the Astrologer’s plans for a new world order … but is it enough? Or is the only appropriate response to reality – insanity?
Written in 1929, The Seven Madmen depicts an Argentina on the edge of the precipice. This teeming world of dreamers, revolutionaries and scheming generals was Arlt’s uncanny prophesy of his country’s traumatic passage through the twentieth century. Even today it retains its power as one of the great apocalyptic works of modern literature.
‘If great means anything at all, then Arlt is surely a great writer … he is Latin America’s first truly urban novelist … this is the power which inspired literature possesses’ Guardian ‘Let’s say, modestly, that Arlt is Jesus Christ. Argentina, of course, is Israel and Buenos Aires is Jerusalem’ Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Arlt (1900–1942) was born in Buenos Aires to a Prussian immigrant from Poznań and brought up in the city’s crowded tenement houses. A journalist and inventor, he patented a method to prevent ladders in women’s stockings. Arlt died suddenly of a heart attack aged just 42.
Fiction£8.99B format paperback272ppISBN: 9781781254288eISBN: 9781782831488February 2015World ex USA, Can
Classic
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Serpent’s Tail Classics
9781846689581e 9781847655059£8.99
9781846687853e 9781847655561£8.99
9781846689628e 9781847655820£8.99
9781781252772e 9781847655585£9.99
9781781253892e 9781782831266£8.99
9781846687860e 9781847655448£8.99
9781781253168£8.99
9781846689413e 9781847659606£8.99
9781846687877e 9781847657640£8.99
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Introducing…
Tuskar Rock Press
At a time when literary writing needs championing more than ever, we are proud to welcome Tuskar Rock Press to their new home at Serpent’s Tail.
Tuskar Rock is a micro-imprint publishing a handful of carefully selected books a year – just two or three masterpieces by writers from all over the world. The brainchild of Colm Tóibín and Peter Straus, Tuskar Rock has, since its inception in 2008, built a reputation for outstanding writing from authors including Christos Tsiolkas, László Krasznahorkai, Richard Bausch, Terry Castle and Adam Haslett.
Antonio Muñoz Molina’s In the Night of Time will be the first Tuskar Rock book to be published with Serpent’s Tail. A sweeping epic from one of the most important writers of his generation, In the Night of Time is exactly the kind of book that has made Tuskar Rock a byword for literary excellence.
Hannah WestlandPublisher
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In the Night of TimeAntonio Muñoz MolinaTranslated by Edith Grossman
The internationally bestselling tour de force of love and tragedy in the Spanish Civil War
October 1936. Spanish architect Ignacio Abel arrives at New York’s Penn Station, the final stop on his journey from war-torn Madrid, where he has left his wife and children. Crossing the fragile borders of Europe, he reflects on months of fratricidal conflict in his embattled country, his own transformation from a bricklayer’s son to a respected bourgeois husband and professional, and the all-consuming love affair with an American woman that forever alters his life.
A rich, panoramic portrait of Spain on the brink of civil war, In the Night of Time details the passions and tragedies of a country tearing itself apart. Compared in scope and importance to War and Peace, Muñoz Molina’s masterpiece is the great epic of the Spanish Civil War written by one of Spain’s most important contemporary novelists.
‘Sweeping, magisterial … an astonishingly vivid narrative that unfolds with hypnotic intensity by means of the constant interweaving of time and memory … In the Night of Time is Tolstoyan in its scale, emotional intensity and intellectual honesty’ Economist
Antonio Muñoz Molina is the author of more than a dozen novels, among them Sepharad, A Manuscript of Ashes and In Her Absence. He is the recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, the Prince of Asturias Prize, the Planeta Prize and many others. He lives in Madrid and New York.
Fiction£14.99 Royal trade paperback656ppISBN: 9781781254639eISBN: 9781782831679March 2015UK Com ex Can
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Missing Sam Hawken
The explosive new thriller from the prize-listed author of The Dead Women of Juárez
Crime fiction£7.99 B format paperbackISBN: 9781846689420eISBN: 9781847659613September 2014World all languages
Recently published
US US Tr
IndigoClemens J. Setz
Thomas Pynchon meets Stephen King in a literary thriller to remember
Fiction£12.99 Demy trade paperbackISBN: 9781846689536eISBN: 9781847659927August 2014UK Com ex CanExclusive Europe
Raw MaterialJörg Fauser
Funny and savagely ironic, Raw Material is a great modern European novel
Fiction£8.99 B format trade paperbackISBN: 9781846689734eISBN: 9781782830283November 2014World English language
See You in ParadiseJ. Robert Lennon
‘Dark, dazzling and reeling with a constant undertow of dangerous unpredictability’ Téa Obreht
Fiction / Short stories£8.99 B format trade paperbackISBN: 9781781253359eISBN: 9781782831013November 2014UK Com ex Can
Spoiled BratsSimon Rich
‘A James Thurber for our times, in Borges’ suit, wearing Flann O’Brien’s hat’ Ian McMillan
Fiction / Short stories£8.99 B format trade paperbackISBN: 9781781252833eISBN: 9781782830801August 2014UK Com ex Can
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Love GameElizabeth Wilson
‘Fascinating … a sporting history unlike any I’ve read’ Guardian
Sport / Social history£9.99 B format paperbackISBN: 9781846689116eISBN: 9781847658784May 2015World all languages
No Book But the WorldLeah Hager Cohen
‘A poignant and illuminating study of the bonds within families’ Financial Times
Fiction£8.99 B format paperbackISBN: 9781846689710eISBN: 9781782830269March 2015UK Com ex Can
New in paperback
US Tr
No Man’s Landedited by Pete Ayrton
‘The essential collection of writing from the First World War’ The Times
Fiction anthology£9.99 B format paperbackISBN: 9781846689260eISBN: 9781847659224January 2015World ex USA, Can
We Are All Completely Beside OurselvesKaren Joy Fowler
The book everyone’s been talking about, from Booker judges to the twitterati Fiction£7.99 B format paperbackISBN: 9781846689666eISBN: 9781782830207June 2014UK Com ex Can
After Me Comes the FloodSarah Perry
‘An extraordinary debut … will haunt readers long after the final page’ John Burnside, Guardian
Debut fiction£8.99 B format paperbackISBN: 9781781253649eISBN: 9781846689468June 2015World ex USA
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Contents
2–3 Gone to Ground Marie Jalowicz Simon4–5 All Day Long Joanna Biggs6 Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy Thrillers7 Gun Street Girl Adrian McKinty8 Glass Alex Christofi9 The Winter War Philip Teir10 Fatale Jean-Patrick Manchette11 The Gunman Jean-Patrick Manchette12 The Evening Chorus Helen Humphreys 13 Leonora Elena Poniatowska14–15 Pleasantville Attica Locke16 Cowboys and Indies Gareth Murphy17 The Moth introduced by Neil Gaiman18 The Lights of Pointe-Noire Alain Mabanckou19 A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines20 The Seven Madmen Roberto Arlt21 Serpent’s Tail Classics22–23 Introducing Tuskar Rock Press 24–25 In the Night of Time Antonio Muñoz Molina26–27 Recently published and new in paperback28–31 Backlist32–33 Contact information
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Catalogue cover: Peter Dyer Catalogue artwork: Two Associates
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