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Canongate has scooped iconic Parisian bookshop Shakespeare and Company’s anthology of author interviews.
Publisher-at-large Francis Bickmore and editor Aa’Ishah Hawton acquired world rights to Live for Humanity from Clare Conville at C&W.
Shakespeare and Company is located on the banks of the Seine, opposite Notre-Dame in the French capital and has a history of being a meeting place for anglophone writers and readers.
“In that tradition, determined for the bookshop to remain a place of meaningful and transformative conversation, owner Sylvia Whitman developed the bookshop’s readings programme,” the publisher said. “More recently this has been curated and hosted by Adam Biles, novelist and the bookshop’s literary director. He has conducted several hundred interviews with novelists, [including] Rachel Cusk, Madeline Miller, Leïla Slimani, Zadie Smith, Colson Whitehead, and writers of non-fiction [such as] John Berger, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Naomi Klein, Olivia Laing, Carlo Rovelli, and Rebecca Solnit.
“Live for Humanity is a selection of the best of these interviews from the past decade, each introduced by Biles. This beautiful hardback is packed with warmth, sensitivity and humour; it’s a celebration of the greatest writers of our age and an insight into the lives and thoughts behind some of today’s most talked-about books.”
The anthology features an introduction from Whitman, who said: “Welcoming authors and hosting events has always been a core part of our identity, and some of my best memories in the bookshop are of listening to writers talk intimately about their work and process. It feeds the organic cycle in this literary beehive – from housing aspiring writers, to the focused stillness at an author’s reading, to the bustle of selling books to readers. I can’t think of a publisher I’d rather work with on this project than Canongate.”
Biles is an English writer and translator based in Paris. He is literary director at Shakespeare and Company, from where he hosts their weekly podcast, and where he curated the podcast series “Friends of Shakespeare and Company Read Ulysses”. Feeding Time, his first novel, was published by Galley Beggar Press and was a book of the year for the Observer and Irish Times. It was published by Éditions Grasset in France in 2018. His second novel, Beasts of England, an anarchic sequel to Orwell’s Animal Farm, will be published by Galley Beggar Press next year.
“An author interview at Shakespeare and Company is quite unlike anything else,” he said. "“It’s as if an alchemical reaction takes place between the guest, the audience, the bookshop and its storied past – a reaction that leads writers to speak more openly, more compellingly and from the deeper reaches of their souls. I have always felt very privileged to be the enabler of this reaction, and really look forward to sharing some of these magical moments with readers.”
Bickmore added: “During these past few years, when collapse felt so close, it was consistently encouraging to see how independent bookshops found ways to endure, survive and even flourish, calling on and feeding their communities of readers. The mothership of all indies has to be the iconic Shakespeare and Company in Paris, the bookshop that has housed – literally and figuratively – so many of the world’s greatest writers.
“As in the Paris Review interviews, the subjects in this book, all guests of the shop, are talking intensely about their process, their work generally and the importance of the written work. As well as rewarding the curious reader, this is also something of a masterclass for writers, too. This is surely the ultimate companion for bibliophiles everywhere and we look forward to publishing this with the bookshop’s current proprietors in black-and-white hardback format in autumn 2023.”