HoZ scoops Talty's 'humane' portrait of Koresh

Head of Zeus has landed Koresh: The True Story of David Koresh and the Tragedy at Waco by Stephan Talty.

Neil Belton, editor-in-chief, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Anna Carmichael at Abner Stein. It will be published under the Apollo imprint in April 2023.

"Drawing on first-time, exclusive interviews with Koresh’s family and survivors of the siege, bestselling author Stephan Talty paints a psychological portrait of this infamous icon of the 1990s," the synopsis reads. "In his signature immersive storytelling, Talty reveals how Koresh’s fixation on holy war and the Apocalypse, which would deliver his fellow Seventh Day Adventists to their reward and confirm himself as a kind of Christ figure, fused with his paranoid obsession with firearms to destructive effect.

"Their deadly 51-day standoff with the embattled FBI and ATF embodied an anti-government ethic that continues to resonate today. Now, 30 years after that unforgettable moment, Koresh presents the tragedy at Waco—and the far-right militancy it inspired—in its fullest context yet."

Talty has written 11 books of non-fiction and two crime novels. Originally from South Buffalo, he’s worked as a journalist, contributing to GQ, the New York Times Magazine and many others. Two of his previous books have been adapted for films, titled "Captain Phillips" and "Only the Brave".

"Koresh has always fascinated me because he’s a mixture of the ancient and the new, of Texas and Jerusalem, of madness and true faith," he said. "My aim for the book was to bring the reader inside his life, to see where these kinds of tragedies begin and how they unfold. When we say the word ’cult,’ it’s often an excuse to roll your eyes at the people inside. David and his followers did terrible and inexplicable things, but they were in search of answers to questions we all ask: where do we come from, why are we here, where are we going."

Belton added: “I remember following the awful events in that small Texas town and wondering about the terrible combination of evangelical fervour and freely available guns, and later reading that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, was inspired by what happened at Waco. That anger and paranoia seems more alive than ever in the 2020s. Stephan Talty’s meticulous, humane recreation of the siege and of the strange prophet David Koresh is in the great American tradition of nonfiction storytelling, and it needs to be read.”