Dedalus 2015-16 HIGHLIGHTS from 2015
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Dedalus 2015-16 HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2015 2 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Apparel by Arthur Mauritz How well do we know anyone, when we often don’t know ourselves? Eavesdrop on the lives of a small group of people. Follow and learn about them over the course of a week. Observe their every movement, word and thought as they lie, cheat and even kill. They are unwittingly becoming connected to each other, until the time when all stories end: with the ending of life. As a consequence of a previous crime, an affluent man is soon to be murdered. A husband and wife both harbour secrets, one of them intent on revelation. A young man questions his sexuality. A group of friends are ignorant to the role that one of their number has played in a man’s death. An innovative and erotic postmodern novel which explores the inner recesses of the human psyche. rthur Mauritz was born in Bristol in 1989, and in the past Atwo decades has played rugby for a local team, lead- guitar in a local thrash-metal band, and studied at university, all without leaving the confines of what he regards as the world’s greatest city. During this time, he has worked as a shoe salesman, a pint-puller, and a kitchen porter, pursuing his hobbies of writing, rugby, and music as much as he can while meeting the demands of a full-time job. £9.99 8 January 2016 ISBN 978 1 910213 40 7 347p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 3 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Mensah by Gbontwi Anyetei ensah is a London crime novel with a difference. It is set in the deprived streets Mof Hackney amongst the African community, a stone’s throw away from the affluent and gentrified parts of the borough and Islington. It pays homage to Raymond Chandler and introduces us to the charismatic Mensah, a black hero for our times. Mensah is the kind of man you go looking for when you have a problem. He will solve your problem for a price. He might cause mayhem and carnage on the way, but he will get the job done. So when a would-be African pop star disappears, her rich husband puts Mensah on the case. Soon things start to go wrong and Mensah finds he is the one being hunted. The mean streets of Hackney spell danger for Mensah. Mensah is one of the great London novels as it introduces the reader to an African city in the heart of London. bontwi Anyetei, a Ghanaian, spent his infancy in GGhana, Nigeria, Botswana and Zimbabwe before growing up in London. He works in project management and in his spare time he is an entrepreneur and keen blogger. His site is called ‘Welcome To The African Quarter’. Mensah is his first novel. £9.99 8 July 2016 ISBN 978 1 910213 41 4 280p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 4 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Blood & Gold by Leo Kanaris thens, Autumn. The start of a crazy week for private investigator George Zafiris. AOn Monday a friend is killed by a hit-and-run driver. On Tuesday the body vanishes. On Wednesday Zafiris begins to ask questions, and on Thursday the first death threats are made. By Friday things are starting to get complicated. A brilliant young concert violinist disappears, quickly followed by her husband. The police seem to be co-operative, but everywhere Zafiris looks, he finds obstructions, dishonesty, mysterious delays. As the country’s debt crisis takes its toll on the people of Athens, suicides and illness proliferate. Zafiris finds his own life spinning dangerously out of control. A few days in an ancient monastery on Mount Athos seem to offer some respite. But there’s a surprise waiting there too. Praise for Codename Xenophon: ‘With vivid characterisation and a plot that thickens without obscuring the essential threads, Kanaris emerges as a sharp new talent in crime writing.’ Barry Turner in The Daily Mail ‘Set in Athens in 2010, Kanaris’s impressive debut, the first in a projected quartet, effectively evokes Greece’s noble antiquity while portraying its current financial crisis...’ Starred review in Publishers Weekly ‘Kanaris has written a little gem, perfect for the beach.’ Scarlet MccGuire in Tribune £9.99 31 March 2016 ISBN 978 1 910213 10 0 255p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 5 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION The Cat by Pat Gray welcome return for Pat Gray’s classic tale of friendship between Cat, Mouse Aand Rat. It will appeal to lovers of books about cats such as Paul Gallico’s Jennie and Thomasina, Robert Westall’s Blitzcat and T.S. Elliot’s Old Possum Book of Practical Cats as well as readers of fables and political allegories like George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The Cat finds himself abandoned without food in an unfurnished house. At first he consorts with his old friends, Mouse and Rat; the one addicted to cheese and philosophy, the other to flashy Italian suits and style. But gradually the Cat gives way to his normal cat-like urges. At first guilty, then elated at his new freedom and the beneficial impact this has on the other residents, the Cat falls prey to a new and troubling vision of how the house might be, with more initiative and enterprise, and more discipline for the likes of Mouse and Rat. Gradually the Cat unleashes new forces on the house and the gardens beyond, achieving ever greater things, except that, as he does so, he finds himself more and more alone. at Gray was born in Belfast in 1953 and studied Ppolitics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He now teaches politics at London Metropolitan University. In June 1995 he won the World One Day Novel Cup, by writing a 20,000 word novel, The Political Map of the Heart in 24 hours at the Groucho Club in London’s Soho. A revised and extended version of The Political Map of the Heart was published by Dedalus in 2001.The Cat was published by Dedalus in 1997 and re-issued in 2015. £8.99 6 November 2015 ISBN 978 1 910213 36 0 124p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights/Rights sold: Romania (Univers) Germany, rights reverted (DTV), USA, rights reverted (Harper Eco). 6 DEDALUS EUROPE 2015 Light-Headed by Olga Slavnikova Translated by Andrew Bromfield ight-Headed is a zany, anarchic black comedy which satirises life in contemporary LRussia. At its heart are the questions: what is important in life and what sacrifices should an individual be expected to make for the good of others? Maxim T. Yermakov was born with an empty space in his head above his brain. This led to him being four kilos less than the normal weight as a child until his mother force-fed him. Always aware of feeling light-headed, Maxim was good at school, acquiring information not from books but out of the air. He left the provinces for Moscow where he worked as a brand manager for a chocolate manufacturer. He was contemplating buying his first flat when one day two sinister individuals turned up at the factory to see him. His light head was causing all sorts of problems. It was an alpha object which created natural disasters, terrorist outrages and buildings to collapse. Maxim T. Yermakov’s existence threatened the well-being of the state and its citizens. He should do the decent thing and commit suicide, Maxim T. Yermakov refused and so began his unequal struggle with the organs of the state. lga Slavnikova was born in 1957 in the Urals. OShe now lives in Moscow where she works as a journalist and as the director of the Debut Prize, which champions the work of new authors. In 2006 she won The Russian Booker Prize for her novel 2017. Light-Headed was shortlisted for the 2011 Big Book and 2012 Russian Booker awards and won Book of the Year Award 2011 at the Moscow International Book Fair. £12.99 6 November 2015 ISBN 978 1 910213 34 6 378p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World English 7 DEDALUS EUROPE 2016 Also by Diego Marani: 8 DEDALUS EUROPE 2016 The Interpreter by Diego Marani Translated by Judith Landry he Interpreter follows on from New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the TVostyachs and forms a trilogy of novels on the theme of language and identity. The Interpreter is both a quest and a thriller, and at times a comic picaresque caper around Europe, but it also deals with the profound issues of existence. An interpreter at the UN in Geneva seems to be suffering from a mysterious illness when his translations become unintelligible and resemble no known language. He insists he is not ill and that he is on the verge of discovering the primordial language once spoken by all living creatures. His predicament is soon forgotten when he disappears and things can return to normal. The interpreter’s boss starts to have problems in talking and seems to be speaking the same gibberish as the missing interpreter. He seeks help in a Sanatorium in Munich but reaches the conclusion he must talk to his missing colleague to understand what has happened to him and to have any hope of a cure. He follows the trail of the missing interpreter around Europe as his life undergoes profound changes and he is forced to confront the darker side of existence. iego Marani was born in Ferrara in 1959. He works Das the Policy Officer in charge of multilingualism for the European Union in Brussels.