Serpent’s Tail snares two novels and a queer cultural history

Serpent’s Tail has snared two novels and a "unique" queer cultural history in a new wave of new acquisitions.

The three new titles comprise a "fabulously erudite" debut non-fiction title by Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize shortlistee Bryony White, a "painfully astute" debut novel by short story writer Uttama Kirit Patel and a "perfectly realised" novel by rising French author Camille Bordas. They are scheduled for publication across 2025 and 2026.

Serpent’s Tail’s commissioning editor Leonora Craig Cohen acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, with audio to Dirty Queers by White from Laura Macdougall at United Agents, and the book is scheduled for publication in spring 2026. Cohen also bought world all-language rights to Patel’s Shape of an Apostrophe from Kanishka Gupta at the Writer’s Side Agency, and the book is scheduled for March 2025.

Meanwhile, acting publishing director Luke Brown bought UK and commonwealth rights from Luke Ingram at The Wylie Agency for The Material — to be published in July 2024 — and an unnamed collection of stories by Bordas. 

The synopsis for White’s Dirty Queers: A History of Art and Filth, says: "From the burgeoning censorship of the 1960s through the Sex Wars of the 80s, the AIDS crisis of the 90s, to the present day, Dirty Queers tracks a history of sanitisation, gentrification and censorship, to uncover a radical artistic world populated by queer figures whose underappreciated work remains vital and relevant today."

White is assistant professor in theatre and performance studies at the University of Warwick and regularly writes for publications such as the Times Literary Supplement and the LA Review of Books. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize.

Cohen commented: "Dirty Queers is fabulously erudite and unique, both personal and polemical. It ties together lots of extremely important topics about respectability, public space and private life. This is writing with real stakes."

Moreover, Patel’s Shape of an Apostrophe is described as "a richly nuanced investigation of maternal ambivalence". The synopsis says: "Lina never wanted children and her husband Ishaan agreed, but now two lines on a test say otherwise. As Lina’s overbearing mother-in-law makes her life ever more unbearable, she finds herself being driven further towards the baby that will change her entire understanding of her place in the world." 

Patel is the founding editor of the website South Asian Parent and was a semi-finalist of the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest 2016. She was also nominated for the PEN/Robert J Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers in 2017.

Cohen said: "Shape of an Apostrophe is at once painfully astute about the compromises we make to belong, acerbically funny and beautifully wise about the endurance of love. Lina is an unforgettably witty and determined narrator and I fell head over heels for her."

In addition, Bordas’ first novel to be published in the UK, The Material, is set in Chicago and explores the stand-up comedy scene. The author published her first two novels in France before the age of 25 and has moved to writing in English. 

Brown said: "This is one of the funniest and saddest novels I’ve read, and will be a highlight of our publishing in 2024. The world of stand-up comedy provides a wonderful lens for examining the relation between saying what is acceptable and what is funny.

"Fans of Lorrie Moore and Zadie Smith will love the superbly realised characters, the intellectual ambition and bravura style."