Galley Beggar snares Biles’ sequel to Animal Farm

Galley Beggar has acquired Beasts of England, the second “powerful and impressive” novel from Adam Biles.

Co-publishers Eloise Millar and Sam Jordison obtained world rights directly from the author, and will publish in autumn 2023. 

“Beasts of England is an anarchic sequel to Animal Farm, in which Adam Biles honours, updates and subverts George Orwell’s classic, while channelling the chaotic, fragmentary nature of populist politics in the internet age into a savage farmyard satire,” the synopsis reads.

“Beasts of England, which takes its name from the farm’s hymn in Orwell’s book, is a warped fable, a state-of-the-farmyard novel about back-stabbers, truth-twisters and corrupt charlatans, perfectly suited to our age. It’s set several years since the threshing machines were sold off, the milking sheds shut down, and Manor Farm has reinvented itself as the South of England’s premium petting zoo. Now, humans and beasts alike, from all over Wealden and beyond, come to stroke, fondle and take rides on Manor Farm’s animals, as well as buy souvenirs from the gift shop. But life, in spite of what their leaders may want them to believe, is not a bed of roses for the animals on the farm. Not least because these leaders are venal and corrupt, and find it so hard to tell the truth about anything.”

Biles is an English writer and translator based in Paris. He is literary director at Shakespeare and Company, a renowned Parisian bookshop. His début novel Feeding Time was published by Galley Beggar in 2016 and was a book of the year for the Observer, the Irish Times and the Millions. It was published by Editions Grasset in France in 2018.

“I’ve been obsessed with Animal Farm since I first read it as a 14-year-old, yet never did I suspect that democracy, in Britain and across the world, might putrefy to such an extent that it would require a sequel,” Biles said. “But here we are, so here it is.”

Millar added: “It’s just wonderful to be working with such a superb writer again, and to be able to once again delight in Adam’s wit and humour. Like his debut, in Beasts of England Adam’s giddy, free-wheeling maximalism, as well as his ability to skewer base individual impulse, politics and corruption so powerfully, is on full display. We’re very proud to be putting out a book that says so much so effectively.”