Atlantic Books signs 'future cult classic' on Joan Didion and Eve Babitz from Lili Anolik

Atlantic Books has signed Didion & Babitz from Vanity Fair contributing editor Lili Anolik. 

Clare Drysdale, group associate publisher, bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Rosie Pierce and Lucy Morris at Curtis Brown, on behalf of Jennifer Joel at CAA. The book will be published simultaneously in the US by Scribner on 14th November 2024. 

Anolik uses the "diary-like letters" of author Eve Babitz, discovered in her attic after her death, to reveal the life of Joan Didion. The writings are centred on 7406 Franklin Avenue, a two-story rental, where Didion and Babitz formed a "complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity". 

Anolik said: "For 10 years, I’ve been standing outside the locked door that is Joan Didion. Didion, on the surface, is a confessional writer. But if you look closer, you see that she’s actually quite guarded, quite opaque. Eve Babitz’s letters and journals, which Babitz’s sister discovered after Babitz’s death, are exposing of Babitz, of course, but also of Didion. They’re the key to the locked door. This book is the view from the inside. I’m thrilled—scratch that, ecstatic—to be publishing Didion & Babitz in the UK with Clare Drysdale and Atlantic Books."

Drysdale added: "Our entire office is obsessed with this book! Joan Didion and Eve Babitz individually hold great fascination for readers, but the combination of the two of them and the way Lili has approached this project—part journalist, part detective, part voyeur, part violator—is utterly irresistible. But of course, the book is also about so much more than Joan and Eve—it’s a portrait of a scene, the endlessly intriguing milieu of post-Manson LA. Didion & Babitz reads like a future cult classic along the lines of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Edie: American Girl. We’re raring to go!"