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Dedalus 2016-17 HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2016 2 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Wonders Will Never Cease by Robert Irwin t is Palm Sunday 1461 and the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil is about to Itake place outside the village of Towton. It is one of a series of engagements between the houses of York and Lancaster. The world, when younger, was more brightly coloured and its ecstasies and tortures more fiercely endured. But, ever since the Dolorous Stroke and the Showing of the Grail in the days of King Arthur, England has lain under a curse. So many have died that Hell is now full and consequently the dead stalk the land. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, having been killed at Towton, is vouchsafed the first of many strange visions before being resurrected. From then on adventures come running after him like hungry dogs and he will encounter the Swordsman’s Pentacle, the Draug, the Miraculous Cauldron, the Curse of the Roasted Goose, the Talking Head and the Museum of Skulls. The real world is a poor thing compared to the stories that are told about it. Anthony hears or takes part in many stories, and those stories are porous, so that men and monsters move easily in and out of them. The stories that Anthony encounters have only one purpose and it is not a good one. obert Irwin (born 1946) is a novelist, historian, critic and R scholar. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of seven novels all published by Dedalus: The Arabian Nightmare, The Limits of Vision, The Mysteries of Algiers, Exquisite Corpse, Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh, Satan Wants Me and Wonders Will Never Cease. £9.99 4 November 2016 ISBN 978 1 910213 47 6 391p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 3 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Also by Robert Irwin 4 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Mensah by Gbontwi Anyetei ensah is a London crime novel with a difference. It is set in the deprived streets of MHackney 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 27 January 2017 ISBN 978 1 910213 41 4 280p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 5 DEDALUS CONCEPT BOOKS The Dedalus Book of Gin by Richard Barnett he first paperback edition of the highly acclaimed social history of gin. ‘TIn The Dedalus Book of Gin, Richard Barnett artfully charts the aromatic distillate’s unlikely path from medicine to public menace, blending references as varied as the Archidoxa of Paracelsus and the American television series Mad Men to create a nuanced portrait of the drink and its impact on humanity.’ Evan Rail in The Times Literary Supplement ‘ A myriad of interesting facts, along with social commentary and historical information... Having awakened our thirst, Barnett reminds us after five centuries now is the best time to enjoy gin.’ The Scotsman ‘A colourful journey through gin’s history and its intersection with culture... this is a must-read for those who love gin.’ Class, the magazine of bar culture ‘His expertise and passion for the subject is immediately gin-clear... an intoxicating blend of history and entertainment that is sure to stimulate drinkers and teetotallers alike.’ Publishers Weekly ichard Barnett is a writer and broadcaster on the cultural Rhistory of science and medicine. He studied medicine in London before becoming a historian, and teaches the cultural histories of disease and evolutionary theory at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 2011 he received one of the first Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowships. He writes regularly for the Lancet, and has made many appearances on British and American TV & radio. £9.99 12 January 2017 ISBN 978 1 910213 49 0 292p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights/Rights sold: USA (Grove Atlantic), Russia (New Literary Observer) 6 DEDALUS AFRICA The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila Translated by Jethro Soutar he first novel ever to be translated into English from Guinea Bissau, The Ultimate TTragedy is a tale of love and emerging political awareness in an Africa beginning to challenge Portuguese colonial rule. Ndani leaves her village to seek a better life in the capital, finding work as a maid for a Portuguese family. The mistress of the house, Dona Deolinda, embarks on a mission to save Ndani’s soul through religious teaching, but the master of the house has less righteous intentions. Ndani is expelled from the house and drifts towards home, where she becomes the wife of a village chief. He has built a mansion and a school to flaunt his power to the local Portuguese administrator, but he abandons Ndani when he finds she’s not a virgin. She eventually finds love with the school's teacher, but in tumultuous times, making a future with an educated black man involves a series of hurdles. By turns humorous, heartrending and wise, The Ultimate Tragedy is a captivating novel that brings this little-known country to colourful, vivid life. bdulai Silá was born in 1958 in Catió, Guinea Bissau. AHe moved to the capital, Bissau, to complete his school studies and then to Dresden, Germany, to complete a degree in Power Engineering. He currently lives in Bissau and combines telecommunications work with writing. He is the author of four novels: A Última Tragédia, Eterna Paixão (Eternal Passion), Mistida (Mixed) and Memórias SOMânticas (SOMantic Memories), all of which deal with Bissau-Guinean culture and history. He is the co-founder of the publisher Ku Si Mon Editora and he has also written a play, As Orações de Mansat (Mansat’s Prayers), a Bissau-Guinean Macbeth. £9.99 5 May 2017 ISBN 978 1 910213 54 4 256p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World English 7 DEDALUS EUROPE 2017 Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter by Margherita Giacobino Translated by Judith Landry ‘It has been a long while in Italian fiction since such an authentic and engaging voice has appeared.’ Bruno Quaranta in La Stampa ortrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter tells the story of four generations of a Ppeasant family living outside Turin between the late nineteenth century and the boom years of the 1950s, as they clamber out of grinding rural poverty into the sixties world of frozen fish and fridges. The author's grandmother reluctantly emigrates to California after her marriage to an Italian emigrant, and returns to Italy semi-paralysed after a mishap as she is giving birth.The father and the child remain in the USA when her father dies the author’s eight-year-old mother returns to Italy, to be brought up by a family she does not know by her ‘three mothers’, her mother and two aunts, to become Italian again and ultimately to marry a captivating ‘man-boy’ whose fecklessness is grippingly described, as is his time in a German prison camp in World War II. She runs a small shop which gradually expands, lifting the family out of the working class; her daughter, Margherita, always a conscientious student, reared by this extended matriarchal family, becomes the writer of this book, and narrates the family’s story. ‘An epic novel, which is the story of an Italy which no longer exists, becomes the portrait of a family. It is a novel which touches the heart.’ Valeria Parrella in Grazie argherita Giacobino was born in 1952 and lives Min Turin. She is a writer, journalist and translator from French and Italian. Portrait of a Family with a Fat Daughter, published in Italy in 2015, has already been translated into French and German. It is the first novel by Margherita Giacobino to be translated into English. £12.99 27 January 2017 ISBN 978 1 910213 48 3 304p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World English 8 DEDALUS EUROPE 2017 The Rehearsals by Vladimir Sharov Translated by Oliver Ready ew Jerusalem Monastery, seventeenth-century Moscow. Patriarch Nikon has Ninstructed an itinerant French dramatist to stage the New Testament and hasten the Second Coming. But this will be a strange form of theatre. The actors are untrained, illiterate Russian peasants, and nobody is allowed to play Christ. They are persecuted, arrested, displaced, and ultimately replaced by their own children. Yet the rehearsals continue... A stunning reflection on art, history, religion and national identity, The Rehearsals is the seminal work in the unique oeuvre of Vladimir Sharov, Russian Booker Prize winner (2014) and author of Before & During (Read Russia award for best translation, 2015). Praise for Before & During: ‘Before and During remains a disorienting read. The novel invokes real historical events and people (Tolstoy, Madame de Stael, Saint John of Kronstadt, Alexander Scriabin and Stalin, among others), swirling them into a phantasmagoric alternative chronology.

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