Bloomsbury wins Joe Biden biography

Bloomsbury is to publish a biography of US presidential candidate Joe Biden by Evan Osnos later this month. 

Associate publisher Alexis Kirschbaum acquired UK & Commonwealth rights to Joe Biden: American Dreamer from Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown, to publish on 27th October. The US is to publish simultaneously, with rights sold to Colin Harrison at Scribner by Jennifer Joel at ICM.

Kirschbaum said: "This book gives us a brilliantly nuanced portrait of Joe Biden, and will become the biography of him for years to come. What is special about it is that it’s not simply a book about Biden’s life in politics. It’s about Biden the man, the tragedies he has experienced, and the persistence and empathy he has developed to get where he is today. There is no one better placed to chronicle Biden’s life than Evan Osnos, and I am thrilled that we will be publishing it on the Bloomsbury list this autumn."

The biography's synopsis states: "Joe Biden will examine Biden’s 50-year-long political career and lifelong quest for the presidency, considering both his professional setbacks and the deep personal losses he has suffered. It will draw on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including former president Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and a range of progressive activists, advisers, opponents and Biden family members."

Osnos has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2008. His last book, Age of Ambition (Vintage), won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, and he was also part of a team awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He said: "Six years ago, the New Yorker gave me the chance to start writing about Biden; and I’ve stayed fascinated by the extraordinary course of his life ever since. After visiting him at home in July, for my latest story, I decided to pull together my thinking about Biden, and this moment in America, as a longer narrative."