Little, Brown nets Goddard’s ‘striking’ novel on class and friendship

Little, Brown has signed author and poet Keiran Goddard’s second novel, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, described by the publisher as “a stylistically striking novel told from the alternating perspectives of five friends who grew up together on the same council estate”.

Anna Kelly acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Clare Conville at C&W, and US and Italian rights went to Eva Ferri at Europa Editions and Edizioni E/O. UK publication is scheduled for spring 2024.

Europa Editions and Edizioni E/O have also acquired US and Italian rights to Hourglass (Little, Brown), Goddard’s Desmond Elliott Prize-longlisted debut novel, published on 3rd March 2022. 

Kelly said of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning: “This moving novel about friendship, loyalty, love and forgiveness explores how class and circumstance shape people’s lives and how we choose what to value. Written with the vibrant imagination and searching intelligence that have made Hourglass resonate so powerfully with readers, it’s the perfect next book for Keiran to write.”

Goddard grew up in Shard End, Birmingham, and is the author of two poetry collections. He produces research on workers’ rights, the future of work, automation and trade unionism.

He said: “I wanted to write a novel about working class friendship that captured something of its joys and its intimacies as well as its hardships. I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is a book that means an awful lot to me, a book that I have been thinking about in one form or another for as long as I can remember. I am incredibly pleased and proud to be working once again with Anna and the wider team at Little, Brown, and with Eva at Europa Editions and Edizioni E/O.”