'Flat-out astonishing' debut novel Trenton Makes to Atlantic

Atlantic is to publish Trenton Makes, the debut novel by reviewer and essayist Tadzio Koelb.

Senior editor James Roxburgh acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Trenton Makes from Sophie Lambert at Conville & Walsh. Atlantic will publish in Summer 2018.

When World War II ends, Abe Kunstler wants his share of the American Dream. In Trenton, New Jersey that means a factory job, a car, a wife and family. Getting these things will be harder for Kunstler than it is for other people, however, because his life is a lie, an invention forged in the heat of a terrible crime. Haunted by his past, terrified of exposure, and searching obsessively for redemption, Kunstler moves from one ruthless act to the next.

Roxburgh said: “Trenton Makes is an uncompromising, flat-out-astonishing debut. I like the novel’s grimy atmosphere and the class in its prose; I love the smart things it says about misogyny, the constructs of masculinity and the prescription of violence. Koelb has set his characters fifty years in the past, but they speak urgently, brilliantly and directly to a modern world. It also happens to have the kind of twist that leaves you slack-jawed and in a daze, itching to ruin it for anyone who has not yet read.”

Trenton Makes will be published in the US by Bill Thomas at Doubleday, and in France by Juliette Ponce at Buchet-Chastel.

Koelb is a graduate of the University of East Anglia. He is a reviewer and essayist for a variety of publications that include the New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in Brooklyn.