Arcadia snares non-fiction books by Gachet and Sayarer ahead of Frankfurt Book Fair 

Arcadia Books publisher Katharina Bielenberg has bagged books by Turkish-British winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Writing Award Julian Sayarer and Dr Alain Gachet, a French a mining engineer, petroleum geologist and geophysicist.

Bielenberg acquired world rights to Sayarer’s Türkiye: Cycling Through a Country’s First Century and Dr Gachet’s Water and Peace: A Journey Through the World’s Most Explosive Conflict Zones in Search of Deep Water, with rights to the latter excluding France). Rights in both instances were acquired directly from the authors.

In Türkiye, Sayarer combines his love of cycling with an exploration of the history and geopolitics of the country, the publisher says. It will be published in October 2023, on the centenary of the founding of the Turkish Republic, by Ataturk.

Sayarer said: “Cycling across a country has become my method of book-writing, but I’m conscious I’ve not yet done it in either of the two — Britain or Turkey — that I think of as ‘home’. Riding and writing this book for the first centenary of the Turkish Republic, at a time when so much is changing in both Turkey and the world around it, feels like an exhilarating challenge that I can’t wait to begin.”

Bielenberg said: “Türkiye comes at the perfect moment for an international readership, reflecting on exactly 100 years of the republic as the country strives to become an ever bigger player on the world’s stage."

Gachet’s book is due for publication in July 2023. Gachet, the inventor of an algorithm that can detect the presence of deep groundwater, and who uses humanitarian intelligence, hydrology, geology and geospatial analysis in his explorations, said: “This book is not about the cold statistics of climate change, but about my very real encounters from Darfur in 2004 to Iraq in 2022 and my fieldwork to identify invisible, vital groundwater.

“I have been trapped progressively in the escalation of the water war, from Afghanistan to the Horn of Africa, Somalia, Kenya...It is a privilege to share my experiences about the precarious nature of water and my long quest for this ultimate and vital resource. We have a duty to remain optimistic about the solutions offered by science, to heal the wounds that humanity has inflicted on itself.”

Bielenberg said of this title: “Water security is one of the most urgent issues of our times. Alain has spent the last 20 years putting himself in harm’s way to show vital water sources for the benefit of hundreds of thousands of people. We are delighted to be bringing this gripping account of his work on the ground to readers worldwide.”