Saraband scoops 'dark' novel from A L Kennedy

Saraband has scooped Alive in the Merciful Country, a "dark" novel about "the impact of ongoing patriarchal abuses of power", from A L Kennedy. 

Publisher Sara Hunt acquired world English-language rights from Antony Harwood at Antony Harwood Literary Agency. The novel will be published on 9th January 2025. "This is the perfect partnership: an outstandingly gifted writer and a brilliant publisher, both committed to fiction that is vitally contemporary," said Harwood. 

The synopsis reads: "Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present. With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her." 

Hunt commented: "I could not be more thrilled to be publishing this stunning new work by a writer I’ve admired for so long and with such a stellar reputation. It’s vintage Kennedy, creative with language and form, and dealing with trauma, politics and society, yet studded with humour and lightened by hope. I can’t wait for readers to discover it."

Kennedy added: "I am delighted to be working with the team at Saraband and to be deepening and developing a creative relationship."