Dedalus Books Catalogue Market FarmP November 2012 - September 2013 DIEGO MARANI Diego Marani’s latest novel God’s Dog, translated by Judith Landry, will be published by Dedalus in January 2014. 2 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Market Farm by Nicholas Bradbury arket Farm is a Swiftian satire on the untrammelled free market Mthinking that helped usher in the current financial crisis. In its concept, it pays homage to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and engages the reader in an amusing way with the causes and likely outcomes of the crisis we are all facing. The story follows the fortunes of three characters: Erroll, a bull who is an eternal optimist; Mervyn, a donkey who is a down- to-earth pessimist; and Lily, a chicken who is largely timid and confused. While focusing on the damage wrought by the financial crisis, Market Farm examines its deeper causes and takes passing swipes at other problems of modern life. These include the cult of fine food, the rise of the welfare state, pollution, obesity, social disorder, the domination of the political process by the media, and even the rise of the internet and phenomena such as Twitter. icholas Bradbury was born in Lagos, Nigeria, Nwhere his father worked as an architect. From the age of four he grew up in Yorkshire and later in Warwickshire. His career has encompassed government, banking and public relations in England, Canada and Hong Kong. He now lives with his wife and son in Oxfordshire. £8.99 15 March 2013 ISBN 978 1 909232 23 5 140p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 3 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Time of the Beast by Geoff Smith n the Dark Ages, Athwold, a young monk, leaves his monastery in Idisgrace, to seek spiritual redemption by becoming a hermit in the wild expanse of the dismal Fenlands. Here he experiences love, desire and also horror, leading him to join the warrior-monk Cadroc in his quest to hunt down a brutal and mysterious killer – supposedly a demon which stalks the remotest reaches of the marshes, but whose true nature remains ominously unknown. It is a journey which takes Athwold deep into a world of pagan superstition and terror, on a blood-cursed trail of rage, revenge and madness; and to his final confrontation with darkness– both his own and the world’s. Time of the Beast is a dark and atmospheric novel combining history and fantasy. eoff Smith is a businessman who lives in Surrey. GTime of the Beast is the result of his longstanding interest in Anglo-Saxon history and literature. £9.99 30 June 2013 ISBN 978 1 909232 36 5 288p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 4 DEDALUS CONCEPT BOOKS The Decadent Sportsman by Medlar Lucan & Durian Gray rom their offices above a boxing gym in Old Havana, Medlar Lucan Fand Durian Gray have set aside their congenital lethargy to begin a glittering and fantastical new project: The Decadent Sportsman. “We are inspired in part by the magnificent wastefulness of the preparations for the London Olympic Games – exactly the kind of futile extravagance that Caligula or Nero would have adored – and in part by the pungent odours of sweat and bruised leather that waft up through the ventilation grillles in the floorboards from the boxing ring below.” This orchid-scented duo bring their wit and monstrous imaginations to play across the entire history of sport, with chapters ranging from the Greek athletic ideal and its perversions to the Nazi Olympics of 1936 and the use of drugs, alcohol and visionary states of being. The book also includes the full text of their proposal to the IOC for a new and more impressive Alternative Olympic Games, with events such as voyeurism, dentistry, Russian roulette, cocktail mixing, posing, couture, hairdressing, mendacity, bohemianism, architectural pâtisserie, and the roasting and carving of meat. edlar Lucan & Durian Gray are the authors of The Decadent MCookbook, The Decadent Gardener and The Decadent Traveller. £9.99 30 November 2012 ISBN 978 1 907650 55 0 250p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 5 DEDALUS CONCEPT BOOKS The Dedalus Book of Vodka by Geoffrey Elborn oth sophisticated and brutal, vodka is the best-selling spirit in the Bworld. Distilled from rye or the humble potato, it was first used as a medicine in the Middle Ages, but it took James Bond and the Cold War to make it glamorous in the West. Vodka was popularised as a toast by Peter the Great, but it was also his favourite punishment for wrongdoers, who had to drink a whole barrel. Vodka is known to Russians as “the green snake” and “the water of life”, and without it the history of Russia would be very different. Every Russian head of state has legislated for or against it, and attempts by Gorbachev to control the supply of vodka hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union, just as Nicholas II’s vodka prohibition contributed to the end of Imperial Russia. Vodka is now a firm favourite in the Western world, particularly with younger drinkers. Often drunk ice-cold and straight for its own unique taste, its versatility in enhancing fruit flavours has also led to special designer flavours being created for different cities of the U.S.A. Exploring vodka in all its aspects, The Dedalus Book of Vodka demystifies the subject without ever spoiling its ambivalent and subtle qualities. eoffrey Elborn has written three biographies, and contributed to Gmany other books, most recently The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He reviews for several journals. A life long interest in Russia began with his reading Dostoevsky’s The House of The Dead at the age of ten. He divides his time between London and Orkney. £15.00 30 November 2012 ISBN 978 1 907650 04 8 272p Hardcover Rights: Dedalus World Rights 6 DEDALUS EUROPE The Mussolini Canal by Antonio Pennacchi Translated by Judith Landry his is one of the most unique and interesting books to come out Tof Italy in recent times. It spans 100 years of Italian history seen through the lives of a peasant family, the Peruzzi, from the Veneto, who are among the 30,000 peasants from Northern Italy sent down to farm the recently drained Pontine marshes outside Rome in the 1930s. The book immediately brings to mind Verga’s I Malavoglia, one of the great landmarks of Italian literature, and what Verga achieves for the 19th-century Sicilian fishermen Pennacchi achieves for the 20th-century Northern farm workers. It has an unusual take on fascism and Mussolini. The mindset of the book is very Italian and in many ways the English reader will be eavesdropping on a private conversation. The ideas and the views expressed are outside the mainstream. Mussolini and the fascists are liked as the family share and benefit from their regime, although the failings of fascism emerge loud and clear. Contemporary events flash through the book and the hardship and misery of early periods are also seen against the background of modern prosperity. ntonio Pennacchi still lives in Latina outside Rome, where he was Aborn in 1950. For most of his life he worked on the nightshift of a local factory before his success as a writer allowed him to leave. His first novelIl Fasciocommunista (2003) won the Premio Napoli and was turned into a major feature film. His second novelThe Mussolini Canal (2010) won The Strega Prize and has been one of the most successful literary novels published in Italy in recent years. £12.99 15 April 2013 ISBN 978 1 909232 24 2 460p B. Format Rights: Uk, Europe & British Commonwealth 7 DEDALUS EUROPE The Lairds of Cromarty by Jean-Pierre Ohl Translated by Mike Mitchell he Lairds of Cromarty combines the past and the present in a novel Tfull of twists and turns, bizarre settings, eccentric characters and grotesque situations which will delight its readers. Mary Guthrie, a student of English at Edinburgh University becomes fascinated by the fantastical 17th-century writer, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, and sets out to write a thesis on him. She pursues her research in his ancestral home, Cromarty House, now a crumbling ruin. There, under the current laird Sir James, she is drawn into increasingly Gothic explorations of the history of the eccentric Urquharts and the maze of tunnels beneath the House. The novel captures the charm and atmosphere of Edinburgh and rural Scotland. ean-Pierre Ohl is a bookseller in Talence near JBordeaux. He is the author of two novels Mr Dick or The Tenth Book and The Lairds of Cromarty, both published by Dedalus. £9.99 1 November 2012 ISBN 978 1 907650 74 1 286p B. Format Rights: World English 8 DEDALUS EUROPE Saturn by Jacek Dehnel Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones aturn will appeal to readers of historical novels and anyone interested Sin Goya, his work and art in general. It is a fictionalised version of the personal life of the great Spanish painter Goya. The story is narrated by Goya, his son Javier and his grandson Mariano. The deeply flawed relationship between the three generations produces an atmosphere of psychological tension.The story is built around the theory that Goya’s horrific series of Black Paintings were in fact the work of his son Javier, and were Javier’s way of expressing his feelings about his father. Each of the paintings features as an illustration within the book. acek Dehnel (born 1980) is a poet, novelist, painter Jand translator. In 2005 he was one of the youngest ever winners of Poland’s Koscielski Prize for promising new writers.