Essex odyssey for Fourth Estate

Fourth Estate has signed world rights to a new novel from British author Lee Rourke.

Editor Mark Richards did the deal directly with the author. The novel, Vulgar Things, follows a man who moves to Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary in an attempt to sort through hid recently deceased uncle’s possessions.

Richards said: “For my money, Lee Rourke is one of the most interesting British writers at work today, resolutely reporting from an England that fiction rarely touches, eyes and deadpan but hilarious prose always open to the myriad submerged structures – whether literary, mythic, physical or ethereal – we find ourselves surrounded by.”