Canongate acquires Mary Costello's 'extraordinary' new novel

Canongate has acquired A Beautiful Loan, the new novel by Mary Costello.

Publisher-at-large Francis Bickmore acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, including translation rights (excluding Canada and Australia), from Eleanor Birne then at PEW Literary, now at RCW, and Canongate will publish the book in March 2026, alongside Norton in the US and Text in Australia.

The synopsis says: "In Dublin in 1985, 19-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and ultimately a crushing betrayal.

"A few years after the collapse of her marriage, Anna meets Karim, a kind Algerian man. She quickly falls in love with him, and with the Muslim faith itself. Life with Karim provides a refuge and offers renewed hope, but, slowly, Anna’s life begins to contract, and she realises she must find a way to break free."

Costello said: "A Beautiful Loan is the most intimate novel I’ve written. I wanted to explore those intensely private areas of a woman’s life where devotion to love – and religious faith – comes into conflict with and tests what it means to be a woman."

Bickmore added: "Mary Costello is in a class all of her own. Her new novel is an extraordinary investigation into the tension between the exterior facts of a life and the invisible inner world that belies it. Anna is not only a curious and sympathetic heroine, someone who we watch coming into herself fully as the chapters turn, but she is also someone who discovers herself through reading."

Birne said: "Mary Costello is an extraordinary writer both at the sentence level and in terms of character. A Beautiful Loan is a remarkable novel from a writer at the height of her powers."