Canongate acquires Alexandra Pringle's debut family memoir

Canongate has acquired Caravan, the debut family memoir of Alexandra Pringle, who was editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury for 20 years and a founding director of Silk Road Slippers.

After a selective submission process, there was a three-way auction, and editor-at-large Ellah Wakatama acquired world rights from David Godwin at David Godwin Associates. North American rights were pre-empted by Judy Clain at Summit Books in the US, and both publishers will publish simultaneously in spring 2027. Rights director Jessica Neale will handle rights requests at Canongate.

"Caravan will be the story of a mother and daughter, and of a family that was never quite what it seemed", the synopsis says. "Having discovered late in life that her mother came from a long line of Berber Jewish Moroccan ancestry, Pringle, now in her 70s, revisits her relationship with her mother, setting off on a quest to explore her roots."

The synopsis adds: "This work of creative non-fiction proposes to take the reader along for the journey, in search of a challenging reconciliation with family secrets and with the past. It is the story of a young woman making her haphazard way in the worlds of art and literature, travelling through the vast landscapes of her ancestors’ stories, and back in time through her mother’s and her own life."

Pringle began her career on the Art Monthly magazine and joined Virago Press in 1978, editing the Virago Modern Classics series. After becoming editorial director at Virago Press, she moved to Hamish Hamilton as editorial director, and four years later left publishing to become a literary agent. During her time as an agent, her clients included Amanda Foreman, Geoff Dyer, Maggie O’Farrell and Ali Smith.

Pringle, who joined Bloomsbury in 1999, said: "I couldn’t be happier to have found Canongate as my home for this strange and exciting new adventure. To have the wisdom and care of Ellah Wakatama as my editor (for I know so well how crucial an editor is) and the enthusiasm and vision of the whole company – not forgetting the boundless energy of Jamie Byng – is a truly marvellous thing. I am so grateful to the magician David Godwin for having brokered this marriage made in heaven."

Wakatama added: "I was breathless with longing reading Alexandra’s proposal – it has everything I look for in a work of non-fiction. There is the intimacy of family life through generations, the understanding that we can build connection and find solace and inspiration in the detail of lives outside our own. There is the gentle but determined quest for understanding embedded in curiosity and a sense of wonder, and there is such a clear love of and capacity with language that draws the reader along with keen anticipation of the journey."

Clain commented: "Writing in the tradition of the great travel writers and authors of literary memoir, Alexandra Pringle’s pages are breathtakingly vivid. She investigates a story of a family and a place with novelistic splendour."