White Rabbit snares ‘exceptionally gifted’ Bracewell’s first novel in 21 years 

White Rabbit has acquired Michael Bracewell’s first novel in 21 years, Unfinished Business, described by the publisher as “heartbreaking and quietly devastating.”

Publisher Lee Brackstone acquired world English language rights from Antony Harwood literary agency for publication on 19th January 2023.

The publisher’s synopsis reads: “Michael Knight is a lifelong office worker. He is faced with the ordinary stuff of life – work, aspiration, marriage, age, divorce, bereavement – but has always kept his eyes fixed on some horizon where a heightened, more romantic world must surely exist.

“When his situation is shaken by events, becoming more urgent, he’s forced to reconsider his past and future alike. After a lifetime of confusing pleasure with happiness, what do you do when you begin to see the shadows lengthening on the lawn?”

Bracewell, whose last published novel was 2011’s Perfect Tense (Jonathan Cape), said: “It is a great pleasure to work again with Lee Brackstone, with whom I share a fascination with the heady worlds of rock and pop music, and I am thrilled that he is publishing my first novel in a little over two decades.”

Bracewell has written six novels, published between 1988 and 2001. Since then he has written numerous books on art, music and culture. His most recent book, Souvenir, was published in 2021 by White Rabbit.

Brackstone commented: “I have worked with Michael now for the best part of two decades and his way of looking at, digesting, and framing the world whether that be through his cultural criticism, fiction, or more lattely in uncategorisable books like Souvenir, has been a huge influence on me.

“Unfinished Business is a book about mortality and existential dread, which works as both a portrait of an individual and on a macro level as an elegy for the City of London. It is the return of an exceptionally gifted British novelist whose subtle, nuanced prose is as powerful as any of his immediate literary peers. After a 21 year hiatus from the form, Michael Bracewell has produced a heartbreaking and quietly devastating novel.”