Granta signs Daisy Lafarge in two-book deal

Granta Books has snapped up the debut poetry collection and debut novel of Betty Trask and Eric Gregory award-winning poet and writer Daisy Lafarge.

Rachael Allen signed world rights for the debut poetry collection, Vida, and co-acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights with editor Ka Bradley for novel, Paul, from Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. Granta Books will publish the collection in November 2020 and Paul in summer 2021.

Lafarge’s poetry collection is the second book to be acquired by poetry editor Rachael Allen for Granta’s forthcoming poetry list, which launches in 2020. 

Allen said: “Daisy's poetry is inimitably original. This startling collection ranges with precision and control through ecology, feminism and animals; romance and relationships are considered through the pipework at CERN, and through toxic airs and lakes. Her language is extraordinarily alive to what it means to think, feel and love on a vulnerable earth. Combining a dense cosmic spirituality with a ruthless reality, this is an urgent, intellectual and gripping collection of poems.”

Paul, which won a Betty Trask award in its unpublished form, is a "startling story about the quiet horror of passivity and the cage of being ‘good’", reads the synopsis. "It follows Frances, a young English woman spending a summer volunteering in rural France, who comes under the influence of Paul, an older, dominant, charismatic man."