Rough Trade bags Patel's 'vital' debut

Independent press Rough Trade Books has landed Sheena Patel's "imaginative, vital" debut novel I'm a Fan.

The press acquired world rights from Abi Fellows at the Good Literary Agency, with the novel slated for publication in May 2022.

In the debut, a single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithful relationship as a prism through which to examine the complications of human relationships. The publisher explained: "The narrator unpicks the behaviour of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world, in turn offering a devastating critique of access, social media, patriarchal heteronormative relationships, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed. 

"In this incredible debut, Sheena Patel announces herself as a vital new voice in literature, capable of rendering a range of emotions and visceral experiences on the page. Sex, violence, politics, tenderness, humour, Patel handles them all with both originality and dexterity of voice." 

Patel is a writer and assistant director for film and TV. She is part of the poetry collective 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE, who have given performances and talks across the UK and internationally, including at the British Library, the Tate, the Muscat Literature Festival, and as a support act for Sleaford Mods. Their work has been featured on podcast "Poetry Unbound" and by British Vogue.

She said: "I wanted to write the story of a person whose side it might be harder and harder to stay on. How much exposure is too much exposure and what kind of uncertainty does real honesty invoke in both me as the writer and you as the reader, what does it ask us to face? This book is an imagined act of revenge verging on performance art. I didn’t want to write a story which glorified the speaker or rendered her trapped into a confining space of being acted upon, as a victim, either. What would it be to fulfil the nightmarish versions of who we might become if we were not so obsessed with being good?"

Editor Will Burns said: "We were lucky enough to read early sections of I’m a Fan and right away we knew we needed to publish this book. From the first drafts there was an incredible energy to what Sheena Patel was doing that got everybody here at Rough Trade Books extremely excited. It’s not just the imaginative material that Sheena Patel has come up with that makes this book so important, but also the power and verve of her prose, both of which have allowed her to create a narrator whose voice and personality is complicated, funny, terrible and charismatic, and who exists in the long tradition of those kind of strangely compelling, double-natured protagonists.

"That impeccably-handled double nature is what allows Patel to deal with her material in a completely original way, and so to create exactly the same complexity in her testimony, argument and relationship with many of the most important ideas in contemporary culture. She has managed to articulate something sexual, political, artistic and literary in an entirely new and natural way. In short, this is a book full of the real stuff of life, as sprawling and messy and invigorating as it is, and the first major work of a literary star I’m sure we’ll see much, much more of in the future."

Rough Trade Books was co-founded two years ago by Nina Hervé and Craig Oldham as a publishing venture in the mould of the independent record label of the same name. Its goal is to bring the same "original spirit and radical direction", as the original record label, to the world of book publishing. Its programme includes books and pamphlets by authors and poets such as Salena Godden, Jarvis Cocker, Wendy Erskine and Burns. 

It has produced more than 50 pamphlets known as Rough Trade Editions, an accompanying tarot deck plus a visual and cultural compendium all about John Carpenter's cult film "They Live", a book about artist Madge Gill, as well as a small book series on the grassroots Brixton music venue The Windmill, Enya: A Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures by musician Chilly Gonzales, and autofiction memoir, In The End, It Was All About Love, by Musa Okwonga.