Head of Zeus snaps up O'Toole's take on Brexit

Head of Zeus has snapped up Fintan O'Toole's "funny and perceptive" account of the run-up to Brexit. 

Publisher Neil Belton acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Three Years in Hell from Natasha Fairweather at Rogers Coleridge & White. The book will be published on the Apollo list in March 2020.

From the bestselling author of Heroic Failure (Apollo), Three Years in Hell is a "mordantly funny and perceptive account of three years in the history of our troubled islands leading up to the tormented passage of Brexit (which is still in doubt)," reads the synopsis. "It includes brilliant and merciless portraits of the leading characters, including Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, and of the strange twists and turns that British politics has taken and the disastrous effects on our friends and neighbours. This is a book that chronicles in vivid, horrified detail the rise of an English nationalism in danger of destroying the very United Kingdom it professes to love."

O’Toole said: "The Brexit saga has been strange in so many ways but strangest of all is the way it has played tricks with time. There is some new drama every week, yet nothing has really changed. There is frantic activity but the same fundamental dilemmas remain, and surely will remain for many decades. I have tried to capture what it feels like to be stuck in this paradoxical moment."

The historian, biographer, literary critic and political commentator has sold 41,720 books for £412,734, with Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain his bestseller on 18,546, according to Nielsen BookScan. His acclaimed columns on Brexit for the Irish Times, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books have been awarded both the Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize.

Belton added: "Fintan O’Toole has for decades been Ireland’s most persuasive, elegant and convincing analyst of Irish delusions and complacencies. His critique of narrow-gauge Irish nationalism and its lethal consequences shone a harsh light on the futility of Republican attempts to achieve a united Irish nation by force. In the last few years he has turned his gaze on English dreams of a ‘liberated’ nation cutting ties with its nearest neighbours and condemning its most vulnerable citizens to greater poverty. He has found a large new readership in Britain and become the most coherent intellectual opponent of Brexit, speaking to huge audiences across the country. His new book shows how we got into this mess."