Ebury bags Carraway's sex industry memoir

Ebury Press has bagged Fleshpot, the second book by Cash Carraway, billed as a “powerful, politically-charged” coming of age memoir set in the last days of the Soho sex industry.

Editorial director Emma Smith acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Lucy Morris at Curtis Brown, for release in March 2022.

Carraway, described by The Times as “the new voice of a generation”, is the author of 2019's Skint Estate (Ebury), which has just been optioned for TV by "Killing Eve" producers Sid Gentle Films for the BBC.

Her new book charts the emergence of New Labour through the eyes of a teenager working in “adult entertainment”, covering Cash's life from 1996 to 2001 and “set against a backdrop of High Street Honeyz, Binge Britain and laissez-faire capitalism”.

The synopsis explains: “Part first-hand witness account to the corporatisation of the sex industry, part parable commenting on the neoliberal strategies implemented by Thatcher/Blair leading to the current climate of a disenfranchised working class in Brexit Britain, this is Cash at her best – laying out an incredible cast of lowlife characters and seedy vignettes, pulling together the painful political threads and leaving us with a different view of the world we live in today.”

Publishing director Sara Cywsinki, who first signed Carraway for Ebury, said: “From the first time I came across Cash’s writing online to everything I’ve read by her since, I’m always blown away. It’s a gift to capture life in the way Cash does: unapologetic and uncompromising. I’m delighted editorial director Emma Smith is teaming back up with Cash on Fleshpot. It won’t disappoint.”

Carraway, an award-winning playwright, author and screenwriter from London, said: “It’s a joy to continue working with Emma and Ebury. Fleshpot is a deeply personal confessional that explores my lascivious youth in the Soho sex industry within a highly charged and naively hopeful period in British politics. The material may be transgressive but beneath the uncomfortable truth is the tale of a lonely teenager navigating a society where the working-class are shamed for harbouring ambition. In turn, it gives context and violent expression to the angry woman who wrote Skint Estate.”

Smith commented: “Cash is an incredible literary talent – raw and dark and funny – and we are thrilled to be continuing our publishing with her. Like Skint Estate, this book will take readers deep into an unseen side of society, a world where the intensely personal becomes the unflinchingly political. Tracing the fracturing of working-class society back to the Things Can Only Get Better era, a melting pot of sex, shame and neoliberalism, Fleshpot is going to deliver a sharp and enduring jolt to the genre of memoir.”