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Will Self has moved from Viking to Grove Press in a three-book deal for a novel, a selection of short form writing and a collection of short stories.
Publisher of Grove Press UK and deputy publisher of Grove Atlantic Peter Blackstock bought world rights, to the novel, Elaine and The Minor Character and Other Stories, and world English to Why Read, a compendium of short writing. Rights to Elaine and the story collection were bought directly from the author, while the Wylie Agency sold rights to Why Read.
Why Read will be published in hardback, e-book and audio in November 2022, with paperback publication in autumn 2023. Elaine will also be published in 2023.
"Will Self’s Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature," the synopsis reads. "Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian Outback and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature such as Woolf, Kafka, Orwell and Conrad. He writes movingly on W G Sebald’s childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S Burroughs’s Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic.
"Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers how, what and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the 19th century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self’s trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humour infuse every piece."
Previously published by Viking in the UK, Self is the author of many novels and books of non-fiction, including How the Dead Live which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year 2002, The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2008, and Umbrella which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2012.
"I’ve been published by Grove Atlantic in the US since 1992, and over the years I’ve valued enormously working with Morgan Entrekin in New York, and latterly Peter Blackstock," he said. "The move to being published by Grove Atlantic in London, and to Grove overall managing my world publishing rights feels timely: this is an independently arranged deal with a fearlessly independent publisher that’s committed above all to literary excellence – would that these values were more evident elsewhere in the sector.
"Looking forward, with Grove publishing a new selection of my shorter-form writing in November, a new novel in 2023, and a new collection of short stories to come after that — the first since 2009 — I believe working with Clare Drysdale and her colleagues at Grove in London will be a new and highly creative chapter in my writing life."
Blackstock added: "I first read Will Self’s work when Grove Atlantic published Umbrella and was blown away by the immense humanity and the stylistic brilliance of that novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The essays in Why Read crackle with Self’s wit and brilliance and will bring him new readers. Will is one of the most distinctive and exciting writers working in English today and I feel very fortunate to be broadening Grove’s publishing of his work to the UK and Commonwealth."