Canongate buys rights to Goldsmiths Prize winner

Canongate has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Goldsmiths Prize-winning Solar Bones by Mike McCormack.

Francis Bickmore, publishing director of Canongate acquired the rights, which exclude Ireland, at auction in McCormack’s novel Solar Bones from Marianne Gunn O’Connor. Canongate also acquired rights in two of McCormack’s previous books Getting it in The Head and Notes from a Coma. 

First published in Ireland in 2016 by Tramp Press, Solar Bones was the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2016, the BGE Irish Novel of the Year Award and the BGE Irish Book of the Year Award. The book is a contemporary stream of consciousness novel that critics have compared to Flann O’Brien and James Joyce. 

Canongate will publish Solar Bones in a collector’s hardback and simultaneous mass market paperback on 4th May. Getting it in the Head and Notes from a Coma will be published in Canongate’s Canons classics paperback series in July 2017. Canongate’s jackets are designed by Canongate art director Rafaela Romaya.

McCormack said: "I am delighted to be working with Canongate and thrilled that my work has found a home at such an adventurous publisher."

Bickmore said: "Solar Bones is a book about life and death that makes you sit up and pay attention. Formally inventive, beautiful and daring as hell, books like this come along once in a decade. This is literature as alchemy and we are proud and grateful at Canongate to become the UK publisher for this exceptional and important contemporary writer."
    
Sarah Davis-Goff, co-publisher of Tramp Press, said: "We're delighted with the incredible success Solar Bones has had, and that it continues to grow with each new award Mike picks up. It means a lot to Tramp Press that we've been able to partner with an independent publisher like Canongate to bring Solar Bones more readers."