Canongate snaps up July's 'irreverently sexy' new novel

Canongate has snapped up All Fours, an "irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious" new novel by Miranda July, the author of The First Bad Man (Canongate).

Canongate c.e.o. Jamie Byng acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency. Byng will be the book’s UK editor, working alongside Sarah McGrath at Riverhead PRH US.

The book, which tells the story of a woman upending her life, will be released in both the US and the UK in May 2024. The synopsis says: "A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a non-descript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

It adds: "Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive."

Byng commented: “Few things are more exciting for a publisher to witness than a writer growing with each book and Miranda July’s new novel is testament to her exceptional storytelling skills as they come into full bloom. All Fours is as beguiling and brave as anything I’ve ever read and I came out the other side of this beautiful, emotionally complex, sexy, funny and profound book feeling like I had been transformed in the way truly great fiction can change you."

July is a writer, filmmaker, and artist whose collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Canongate Canons), won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in 23 countries. It Chooses You (Canongate) was her first book of non-fiction. She wrote, directed and starred in The Future and Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.