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Canongate has acquired The Last Days of Roger Federer, Geoff Dyer's latest "gloriously wayward" non-fiction title.
Publishing director Francis Bickmore acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Sarah Chalfant at The Wylie Agency. FSG also acquired US rights. Canongate will publish in hardback in June 2022.
The book explores the ending of significant events in life, and examines the achievements of writers, painters, musicians and athletes that have meant something to the author.
Its synopsis explains: "With a playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he examines Friedrich Nietzsche’s breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan’s reinventions of old songs, J W Turner’s paintings of abstracted light, John Coltrane’s cosmic melodies, Jean Rhys’ return from the dead (while still alive) and Beethoven’s final quartets—and considers the intensifications and modifications of experience that come when an ending is within sight. Oh, and there’s stuff about Roger Federer and tennis too.
"This book on last things, written while life as we know it seemed to be coming to an end, is also about how to go on living with art and beauty."
Dyer's previous books include Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, Zona and, most recently, See/Saw, all with Canongate. This is his first long-form publication in more than a decade and will be supported by a major campaign, including a UK-wide summer author tour with bookshop events and key festival appearances.
He said of the book: "This is my most substantial book since Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and I need to make clear that, in spite of the title, it’s not the book about tennis I was planning to write after [Jeff in Venice]. It’s a book about careers and working lives coming to an end, and the way that these ends sometimes come not late but very early in the day. It was written, obviously, at a time when life as we know it was coming to an end. Fun though, in a twilight, achey-knees sort of way."
Bickmore said: "Geoff Dyer is back with a major new work. His books have always celebrated the peak experiences of life, straying with glorious waywardness between genres and subjects. Dying and last days is the perfect counterintuitive topic for his understated wit and digressive brilliance, not least because it’s the thing we all try to avoid thinking about but can’t. The Last Days of Roger Federer is an immersive tome that stands to break Dyer out to a whole new generation—if we’re spared."