New Anne Enright novel on fame and sexual power set for 2020

Man Booker-winning author Anne Enright’s next novel, Actress, about sexual power and celebrity, will be published by Jonathan Cape in February 2020.

Jonathan Cape publisher Robin Robertson acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Peter Straus of Rogers, Coleridge & White (RCW). US rights have gone to WW Norton & Company. Actress will be Enright's first novel for five years and will be published on 20th February 2020, retailing at £16.99 in hardback.

The Dublin-based writer’s next book is billed by Cape as “a brilliant and moving novel about fame, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths”. It features “the glamour of post-war America and the shabbiness of 1970s Dublin” and offers “a scintillating examination of the corrosive nature of celebrity”.

The synopsis reads: “This is the story of Irish theatre legend Katherine O’Dell, as written by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End. Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings.

“But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine’s past, or the world’s damage. As Norah uncovers her mother’s secrets, she acquires a few of her own. Then, fame turns to infamy when Katherine decides to commit a bizarre crime.”

Enright has published three collections of stories, one book of non-fiction and six novels, including The Gathering (Vintage), which was the Irish Novel of the Year, and won the Irish Fiction Award and the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz (Vintage), which was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and The Green Road (Vintage), shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. From 2015 to 2018 she was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction.