Dedalus 2017–18 HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2016–17 2 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Dangerous Days by Leo Kanaris ike millions of Greeks today, private investigator George Zafiris is short of money. LBusiness is terrible. The city of Athens is dying around him. No one wants to pay for information, and even the old staple of George’s trade, the extra-marital affair, is in decline. But his phone never stops ringing – with people wanting help for free. George does what he can for desperate cases – an English girl tormented by her Athenian mother-in-law, a government official whose life is threatened for doing an honest job, and a group of Asian farm labourers who are beaten up and evicted by their employer. Meanwhile his wife Zoe complains about his failure to provide, and his son Nick goes abroad to look for work. Dangerous Days is the third novel in Leo Kanaris’ Aegean crime quartet. It shines a light on the most secret and closely guarded sanctuary of Greek life: the family. While the State lurches between dysfunction and bankruptcy, blood relations turn to each other for support. Debts are written off, misdemeanours forgiven, jobs found for unemployables. But if charity begins at home, it also ends there. Networks of obligation bind people so tight they can never escape. Jealousy runs rampant. Nepotism keeps talent suppressed. Crime and corruption are buried in silence. While solving other people’s problems, George gets more deeply entangled in his own. When the offer of work arrives from a tainted family source, he is forced to make an impossible choice between poverty and collusion in crime. eo Kanaris was a teacher for many years. He now writes Lfull time and lives in southern Greece. He is the author of two novels featuring the private investigator George Zafiris: Codename Xenophon and Blood & Gold. He is currently working on his third George Zafiris novel, Dangerous Days. £9.99 26 October 2018 ISBN 978 1 910213 71 1 320p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 3 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Also by Leo Kanaris: 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 ‘The narrative flits from a frenzied Athens to the idyllic islands as politicians, Russian crooks, corrupt policemen thicken the plot, the world-weary Zafiris nimbly negotiating a Byzantine culture in which morality, truth and justice are malleable concepts. Codename Xenophon is a bleak but blackly comic tale that does full justice to its laconic, Chandleresque heritage.’ Declan Burke in The Irish Times ‘Kanaris has written a little gem, perfect for the beach.’ Scarlet MccGuire in Tribune £9.99 ISBN 978 1 909232 83 9 236p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights Sold: German (Aufbau) Blood & Gold ‘Against a backdrop of a financial crisis that is pushing the country to bankruptcy and its citizens to despair, it is all horribly convincing. With this, his second novel, Kanaris has advanced to a five-star rating.’ Barry Turner in The Daily Mail ‘Kanaris depicts a troubled Greece with compassion and precisely observed social commentary.’ Publishers Weekly £9.99 ISBN 978 1 910213 10 0 320p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights Sold: German (Aufbau) 4 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION The Great Chain of Unbeing by Andrew Crumey ndrew Crumey’s novels are renowned for their unique blend of science, history, Aphilosophy and humour. Now he brings the same insight and originality to this story cycle the title of which offers an ironic twist on the ancient doctrine of connectedness, the great chain of being. Here we find a blind man contemplating the light of an atom bomb, a musician disturbed by a conspiracy of radio waves, a visitor to Moscow caught up in a comic case of mistaken identity, a woman on a Greek island trying to become a different person. We range across time, from the Renaissance to a globally-warmed future, across light-years in search of hallucinogenic space-plankton, and into magical worlds of talking insects and bottled fire. Fans of Crumey’s acclaimed novels will occasionally spot hints of themes and figures that have recurred throughout his fiction; readers new to his work will delight in finding subtle links within the pieces. Are they all part of some larger untold story? We have nothing to lose but the chains of our imagination: what lies beyond is a great change of being. ndrew Crumey was born in Glasgow in 1961. He read Atheoretical physics and mathematics at St Andrews University and Imperial College in London, before doing post-doctoral research at Leeds University on nonlinear dynamics. After a spell as the literary editor at Scotland on Sunday he now combines teaching creative writing at Northumbria University with his writing. He is the author of seven novels all published by Dedalus: Music, in a Foreign Language, Pfitz, D’Alembert’s Principle, Mr Mee, Mobius Dick, Sputnik Caledonia and The Secret Knowledge. Andrew Crumey’s novels have been translated into fourteen languages. £9.99 23 February 2018 ISBN 978 1 910213 77 3 280p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 5 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Also by Andrew Crumey: 6 THE DEDALUS HALL OF FAME The Dedalus Book of Absinthe by Phil Baker ‘This is the sort of book it would be very easy to do badly. Phil Baker has, instead done a magnificent job; it is formidably researched, beautifully written, and abundant with telling detail and pitch-black humour.’ Sam Leith in The Daily Telegraph ‘As to whether absinthe is harmful or this book irresponsible – I don’t give a damn. All I know is that the former is very pleasant and the book is informative, amusingly written and perceptive. As The Idler put it a couple of years ago: tonight we’re gonna party like its 1899.’ Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian’s Pick of the Week ‘James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake described a character as “absintheminded”, while lesser punsters spoke of absinthe making “the tart grow fonder”. It reaches across time, this “potent concoction of eccentricity and beauty”. Alluring, then informative and witty.’ Brian Case in Time Out ‘Dwarfish Bohemian psychopaths in stove-pipe hats, ageless Louisiana vampires, Victorian books bound in human skin, fin-de-siècle brothels, strange Goth subcultures and lice-ridden poets: yep, it’s a history of absinthe... An indispensable guide for the contemporary absintheur.’ Class: The Magazine of Bar Culture ‘...packed with enjoyable anecdotes and eccentric absintheurs, and reveals why it has been the most demonised of all alcoholic drinks.’ The Sunday Times ‘The book is an effortlessly engaging, robust little number, unpretentious and with a strong burst of humour on the nose.’ The Bookseller £7.99 2 February 2018 ISBN 978 1 910213 80 3 296p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights Rights Sold: Russia (New Literary Review), Czech Republic (Volvox Globator), USA (Grove/Atlantic), Argentina (Puerto de Palo), Italy (Voland), Brazil (Nova Alexandra). 7 DEDALUS EUROPE 2017 The Tower at the Edge of the World by William Heinesen Translated by W. Glyn Jones he Tower at the Edge of the World is William Heinesen’s last novel written when The was 76, and is the summation of all his work. He is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Nordic author of the twentieth century. William Heinesen described The Tower at the Edge of the World as a poetic mosaic novel about earliest childhood. There is the perspective of both the child and the old man looking back at his life as a child. Although there is a lot of tangible detail and recognisable characters the book has a mythic quality. The events in a small community in the windswept Atlantic ocean being recorded by the writer in his room, his tower at the edge of the world, have a larger than life feel. Torshavn and his childhood are used to tell the history of the world and of creation. illiam Heinesen (1900-1991) was born in Torshavn Win the Faroe Islands, the son of a Danish mother and Faroese father, and he was equally at home in both languages. Although he spent most of his life in the Faroe Islands he chose to write in Danish as he felt it offered him greater inventive freedom. Internationally known as a poet and a novelist he made his living as an artist. His paintings range from large-scale murals in public buildings, through oil to pen sketches, caricatures and collages. £9.99 10 November 2017 ISBN 978 1 910213 66 7 204p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World English 8 DEDALUS CELEBRATING WOMEN'S LITERATURE IN 2018 The Prepper Room by Karen Duve Translated by Mike Mitchell he year is 2031 and all the dire predictions from environmentalists are coming Ttrue: extreme weather bringing storms, floods and intense heat; and the genetically modified ‘killer rape’ is rampant everywhere. A rejuvenation pill has been developed but no one is going to enjoy eternal youth for long: the experts forecast that the world’s ecosystems will collapse in five years’ time. Women have taken over power to try and save the world from the mess men have got it in. But there is opposition in the form of the MASCULO movement that is aiming to reassert male power by violent means if necessary. At the same time apocalyptic sects are proliferating. Sebastian, the central figure in this novel, appears to be one of the good guys, a Greenpeace activist in his youth, he now has an important position in the Democracy Centre.