Corsair signs Shand's 'hugely entertaining' future tech tale

Corsair has signed A Model Citizen, a “hugely entertaining” tale of the future by Daniel Shand.

Olivia Hutchings, commissioning editor, bought world English rights from Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown. It will be released in hardback, trade paperback and e-book in spring 2022.

The synopsis explains: “Set in a UK where artificial intelligence and cloning are part of daily life, the novel follows a cast of characters struggling to come to terms with the reality of their confusing, dehumanising present. How obligated are we to the things we create? What do we give up when we exist online? Why, when our lives become easier, do we end up more dissatisfied and more anxious? A Model Citizen is a subversive and darkly comic story of class, technology, and identity, offering a vision of the future that may be closer than we realise.”

Hutching said: “A Model Citizen is an unsettling, all-too-plausible vision of where our world might be headed but describing it as futuristic doesn’t do justice to how contemporary it feels. In a year when we have all had to use technology in place of genuine human connection more than ever, Daniel captures the hollow feeling it leaves you with better than anything else I’ve read. But it is also darkly funny, warm-hearted and above all, a brilliant story that is hugely entertaining to read.”

Shand is the author of the Betty Trask Prize-winning novel Fallow and the Encore Award-shortlisted Crocodile, both published by Sandstone Press. He has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and teaches literature classes and writing workshops. His short fiction has won several awards and he was the recipient of the Saltire Society’s Literature Travel Bursary in 2016.

He said: “I'm happy that readers will soon be able to enter the world of A Model Citizen. If you're anything like me, you have a love/hate relationship with your mobile, nurse an unhealthy nostalgia for the 1990s, and feel uneasy about your footprint on the planet. If so, then you should enjoy what you find in the book. It's a story about technology, but I hope not one that patronises the users. I was interested in the notion of responsibility too, and how we handle the consequences of the decisions we make.”