William Collins acquires 'major' new book from journalist Burgis

William Collins has acquired a “major” new book by Kleptopia author Tom Burgis.

Publishing director Arabella Pike bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Cuckooland: Where the Rich Own the Truth from Sophie Lambert at C&W. Publication will be in spring 2024. 

“Everywhere, the powerful are making a renewed claim to the greatest prize of all: to own the truth,” the publisher teased. “The power to choose what you want reality to be and impose that reality on the world.”

It continued: “For three years, Tom Burgis followed a lead that took him deeper and deeper into Cuckooland – the place where the rich own the truth. The trail snaked from the Kremlin to Kathmandu, Stockholm to the Steppe, from a blood-soaked town square in Uzbekistan to a royal retreat in Scotland. Burgis hunted down oligarchs, developed secret sources and traced vast sums of money flowing between multinational corporations, ex-Soviet dictators and the west’s ruling elites. And he found one man who wanted the power to bend reality to his will.”

Pike said: “Tom Burgis is a fearless investigative journalist and Cuckooland is a deeply reported work of non-fiction that reads like the best, most horrifying of thrillers. We are immensely proud to publish it.”

Burgis added: “When I started tugging at the thread of a mysterious episode inside a political party, I had no idea it would lead me so far into the fabric of reality itself. In unravelling this one extraordinary story, I’ve come to see that globalisation and technological revolution have combined to imperil the foundation of free societies: that the truth belongs to the many, not the few.”

Burgis’ last book Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World was the subject of a very high-profile High Court libel victory in 2022.