White's 'astonishing experiment in literary form' to Faber

Faber is to publish The Fountain in the Forest, an "astonishing experiment in literary form" by Tony White.

Lee Brackstone, creative director of Faber Social, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Patrick Walsh at PEW.

Brackstone said: "The Fountain in the Forest is that seemingly impossible thing: an astonishing experiment in literary form that is completely readable and addictive as a narrative. With ingenious subtlety and technical brilliance it explores the moment 30 years ago when Thatcher's militia fatally wounded the British political counter-culture. It is a miraculously engineered work of fiction by a writer who stands comparison with the two great Davids of this literary generation: Mitchell and Peace."

White said: "I am honoured and delighted that The Fountain in the Forest will be published by Faber and Faber, where it will sit alongside my previous novel Foxy-T on their list, and to be working once again with Lee Brackstone and the excellent team there. Many of my formative reading experiences came in Faber jackets – Amos Tutuola, Danilo Kiš, Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy – and I couldn’t be more pleased."

White is the author of the novel, Foxy-T (Faber). In 2013, the Science Museum published White’s Shackleton’s Man Goes South – a special commission and the first novel the museum has published. An exhibition about the novel ran in the Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery for two years.

White has been writer in residence at the Science Museum, London, creative entrepreneur in residence in the French Department at King’s College London, and Leverhulme Trust writer in residence at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

He is currently working with Blast Theory on A Place Free of Judgement, a teenage takeover of libraries, that will be streamed live on 29 October 2016; the night the clocks go back.

Faber will publish The Fountain in the Forest in 2018.