Short Books snaps up mental health title in 24 hour pre-empt

Short Books will publish A Manifesto for Belonging: How to Find your Place in a Fractured World by child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Holan Liang. 

UK and British Commonwelath e-book and print rights were acquired in a “significant 24-hour” pre-empt from Laetitia Rutherford at Watson, Little. Audio rights are under offer. Publication is set for spring 2021. 

In A Manifesto for Belonging, Liang presents the argument that what often matters most in the preservation of mental well-being is our sense of who we are and where we belong. The argument is told through patient stories as well as through the author’s own experience as a child immigrant to the UK. 

Liang said: “Sharing personal stories exposing weakness and mental health issues is challenging, but I think now, more than ever, we need to shed light on our darkest feelings of fear, rejection and vulnerability in order to survive.”

Aurea Carpenter, joint publisher of Short Books, said: “Dr Holan makes the case for a new way of looking at mental health, via the idea of our universal need for belonging, whoever we are, wherever we come from. It is a book that could genuinely change people’s experience and understanding.” 

Liang has previously published Inside Out Parenting: How to Grow Strong Children from a Core of Self-Esteem and is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, jointly leading the Psychological Medicine Team, a national service for mental health problems in children with chronic neurological conditions.