Galley Beggar Press seizes Bowles’ 'exquisite' debut novel

Galley Beggar Press has acquired Mark Bowles’ "exquisite" debut novel, All My Precious Madness.

Co-directors Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar acquired world rights rights directly from the author, and the book will be published in autumn 2024.

"All My Precious Madness is the story of a man at odds with the world," the synopsis says. "A savagely funny novel that disdains literary and moral conventions, All My Precious Madness is also a work of unusual care, craftsmanship and empathy – even if that also means understanding the darkest parts of humanity."

Millar said: "All My Precious Madness is an erudite and graceful novel – keen and acute and with important things to say about the British class system, our supposedly meritocratic structures […] It’s also an excruciating, brilliant satire on masculine fragility.”

Jordison added: “Not only does it reinvent that genre in entirely unexpected ways, it presents a new kind of British writing. Uncompromising, philosophical and high-minded – but also primal and brutal.

"There are times when All My Precious Madness is terrifying. But it is also a hilarious and exhilarating reading experience, full of surprises, mischief and pitch black humour."

Bowles commented: “I wanted the reader to come away from this novel feeling that they had witnessed an ‘uncommitted crime’. It’s a story of redemption, but only from the point of view of the narrator. It’s about a man who is, and has always been, at an oblique angle to the world, a man capable of intense feeling, tenderness, eloquence, and casual brutality and preternatural rage."