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Ben Okri moves to Head of Zeus
Head of Zeus has acquired a new novel from Booker prize-winning author Ben Okri called The Age of Magic.
The independent publisher has also acquired the rights to four backlist titles - Astonishing the Gods, In Arcadia and A Way of Being Free (previously with Phoenix) and Dangerous Love (Penguin Classics) - which will be published for the first time as digital books as well as in new paperback editions.
Maggie McKernan bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Jessica Woollard at the Marsh Agency.
The publisher said that Okri, McKernan and Head of Zeus chairman Anthony Cheetham have had a “long and rich association” that began at Random House in 1991 with the publication of The Famished Road (Jonathan Cape), which won the Booker prize.
McKernan said: “Ben always offers a different way of seeing but this new novel seems to me to offer almost a different way of reading. I felt like I was there in a dream, and slightly intoxicated. It’s time for a new generation of readers to experience him - a generation more used to looking for the images behind the images. On a personal level, life without a manuscript from Ben to explore is just too dull.”
The Age of Magic is about a group of travellers in an enchanted Swiss town on the shores of a luminous lake, who find themselves involved in a mystery that disturbs, enlightens, and transforms them, one by one, and in different ways.
Cheetham said: “Ben is a fabulous writer and a loyal friend. I could not be more pleased that he has decided to join us at HoZ.”
Head of Zeus will publish The Age of Magic in hardback and digital this September, alongside paperback and digital editions of the four backlist titles.
Okri's last book was a collection of poems entitled Wild, published by Rider in March 2012. He published a collection of essays, A Time For New Dreams, in March 2011 also through Rider- an imprint of Random House.
