Penguin Press signs latest from George Monbiot

Penguin Press has snapped up the latest book from George Monbiot in a "major deal". 

Chloe Currens, senior commissioning editor at Penguin Press, bought world rights to Swallow This from Antony Harwood of Antony Harwood Ltd. The book will be published in Allen Lane in the UK, and US rights have gone to Matt Klise at Penguin. Canadian rights have been sold to Nick Garrison also at Penguin. Publication is slated for 2021.

“In exploring the most critical environmental issue we face today, Monbiot reaches radical conclusions in Swallow This," said the publisher. Monbiot will highlight farming and fishing as the "biggest causes of ecological collapse" with the "food industry, more than all other factors put together, destroying the living world," reads the synopsis. “In its place must come a new global food system, encompassing microbial protein, alternative organic horticulture, and wilder fields and forests around the world.”

Currens said: “I’m thrilled that all of George Monbiot’s skills as an environmental campaigner, an investigative journalist, a Guardian columnist and a self-confessed troublemaker will come to the fore in Swallow This. We urgently need to rethink the way we produce, distribute and consume our food, and with his rigour, originality and sense of adventure, George will help us do just that.”

Penguin will publish the audiobook edition of George Monbiot’s Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding, read by the author in January 2020.