Picador scoops 'great British Novel' from Evers

Picador has scooped a “Great British Novel” by Stuart Evers, charting more than 60 years of British history through the lives of two very different families.

Editor Kris Doyle acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to The Blind Light from Lucy Luck at C&W, for publication on 11th June 2020.

The synopsis states: “During his National Service, Drummond meets the two people who will change his life: Carter, a rich, educated young man sent down from Oxford; and Gwen, a barmaid with whom he feels an instant connection. Told from the perspectives of Drum and Gwen, and later their children Nathan and Anneka, The Blind Light moves from the late fifties through to the present day, taking in the global and local events that will shape and define them all. From the Cuban Missile Crisis to the War on Terror, from the Dagenham strikes to Foot and Mouth, from skiffle to rave, we see a family brought together, driven apart, fracture and reform – as the pressure of the past is brought, sometimes violently, to bear on the present.”

Evers’ first book, Ten Stories about Smoking (Picador), won the London Book Award in 2011. His most recent collection, Your Father Sends His Love (Picador), was shortlisted for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize.

Evers said: “It is an honour to once again be published by Picador, and to be working with Kris for the first time. The Blind Light has been over seven years in the writing, so I’m thrilled it has such a perfect home." 

Doyle added: “It’s thrilling to see a writer working with such literary flair and ambition without sacrificing the pleasure and emotional intensity I believe most readers want from fiction. This book is at once a tour-de-force, surveying the British psyche over a tumultuous period of history, and a minute study of the changing fortunes of a few precisely-characterised individuals. I don’t know how Stuart simultaneously managed to write something with such heft and delicacy. The book also has a perfect, devastating ending; I was bereft to leave these characters and I think it’s the kind of book that will give many readers that bitter-sweet feeling of a book hangover. I’m delighted to be publishing it and to see one of Picador’s most talented British writers shift into a whole new gear.”