Little Toller signs 'hallucinogenic' narrative from Young

Little Toller Books has signed Wild Twin by Jeff Young, an "Orwellian travel book" which explores the author’s early adulthood hitch-hiking to Paris in the 1970s.

Publisher Gracie Cooper acquired world rights directly from the author for the narrative non-fiction work. Wild Twin will be published as a hardback in 2023.

Young is the author of Ghost Town (Little Toller), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Prize. The book follows his in poverty, staying in cheap hotels, squatting in Amsterdam where he worked as a night porter in the red light district, his deportation from Germany and Holland, befriending a drug-dealing murderer and almost dying on several occasions.

Cooper said: "Ghost Town is an extraordinary book which garnered much praise on publication and was called, rightly, a masterpiece. We felt that this couldn’t be the end of Jeff’s story–we wanted to hear more about his later life, and desperately wanted more of his words, so we’re delighted that we’ll be publishing Wild Twin in 2023.

"We were blown away but what we’ve read. You might think this is a sort of Orwellian travel book, and while it perfectly captures the 70s and 80s, it’s also shot through with Jeff’s extraordinary, almost hallucinogenic vision. It’s destined to become a classic."

Young said: "For much of my life I have had the feeling that a wild twin version of me exists, and that it’s that version of myself that lived that life. But Wild Twin will also return to the present, to Liverpool, to my health problems, mortality and my relationship with my father, now in his 90s, who told me, as I stood waiting to leave for Paris nearly 50 years ago, that it was a ‘silly thing to do.’"