Jonathan Cape buys Brandon Taylor's first non-fiction titles

Jonathan Cape has bought two non-fiction titles by Booker Prize-shortlisted American author Brandon Taylor, a literary critique and a craft book geared towards the “cinematic/visual writer”. 

Željka Marošević, editorial director at Jonathan Cape, acquired acquired British Commonwealth rights from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at the Gernert Company in an exclusive submission. North American rights were acquired at auction by Ethan Nosowsky at Graywolf Press. 

They are the author’s first non-fiction books. “The first book will be Taylor’s non-fiction debut, a major work of cultural and literary critique by one of the most significant young novelists of his generation,” Cape said. “It will be anchored in Taylor’s deep reading of contemporary fiction and build on viral pieces published in his newsletter ’Sweater Weather’ and in publications such as the London Review of Books.  

“In it, he will explain certain cultural trends – from autofiction to sprawling dramas to the vogue for speculative fiction – with the aim of articulating a new vision of ethics and morality in fiction. He will hold up a light to the phenomenon of authors who ‘don’t judge their characters’ or who engage in ‘lax moral world building’, while also expanding outwards to touch on art and cinema.”  

The second is a craft book based on Taylor’s experience teaching creative writing. Cape said: “He has noticed that the primary references for his students are often no longer novels or short stories but television and film. He wants to make the craft of fiction ‘more legible to the cinematic/visual writer’. He asks, ‘what does a writer whose mode is already so deeply visual need in order to understand character, plot, setting, description’, with the goal of making the tools of prose literature more accessible to and usable for emerging writers.” 

Marošević said: “Over the past couple of years Brandon has emerged as one of our freshest and most rigorous critical thinkers and it is always a thrill to think alongside him, whether he’s writing about the Netflix adaptation of Persuasion or how he spent two years reading the entire works of Émile Zola. One of these books will make you a better reader and one a better writer, and I know both are classics in the making.” 

Taylor, who is based in America, said: “I’m honoured and thrilled to be deepening my collaboration with Jonathan Cape with these two books. Grateful for my editors and my whole team at Cape and Vintage more broadly, who have taken such care of my work and encouraged my artistic and intellectual ambitions. It’s a rare and brilliant thing to be in such capable hands.” 

Taylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans (Cape), bought in an eight-way auction in 2022, and Real Life (Daunt), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize. His collection Filthy Animals (Daunt) was awarded the Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.