Ithaka Press snaps up 'groundbreaking' exposé of energy industry from Perry

Ithaka Press has snapped up Blood Will Flow: The Murderous Business of Oil and Gas, a landmark investigation into the energy industry by Alex Perry. 

Sarah Braybrooke, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Richard Pike at C&W Agency. The book will be published in June 2024. 

Blood Will Flow was described by the publisher as a spellbinding and meticulous exposé of the energy industry that uses an Isis attack on an island north of Mozambique in 2021 as its starting point. The island was strategically unimportant but for a vast offshore gas field that had attracted $50bn in foreign investment, the biggest ever in Africa. During the attack, civilians were dragged into the streets and beheaded while a group of 183 men, women and children barricaded themselves inside a hotel to await rescue. "They knew an oil and gas giant had a base defended by 750 soldiers and four helicopter gunships minutes away. But help never came," the publisher said.

Perry’s account seeks to answer the question: "How do energy companies really make such vast profits?"

Braybrooke said: “Alex is a veteran reporter whose tenacious investigative work and cinematic prose style make this book unputdownable. Groundbreaking, lyrical, furious and coming at a time when energy companies imperil the planet and hold governments hostage, Blood Will Flow  turns the spotlight on the industry’s power-brokers and holds them to account. It will do for oil and gas what Empire of Pain did for the pharmaceutical industry.”