George
Washington Wilson was
Victorian Scotland’s leading photographer, particularly in the art of stereo
photography. Prince Albert commissioned him to photograph the construction of
Balmoral Castle, and he also captured many historic portraits of Queen Victoria
who honoured him by appointing him her official photographer. He made a
thriving business printing and selling stereo cards of tourist attractions and
now a new book, George
Washington Wilson: Artist and Photographer (hb,
£30, 978 0957424692) presents a glorious gallery of his work in colour. The 3D
imagery that had enthralled Wilson, captured the imagination of Brian May a century later and he has written a foreword to the
book which includes the OWL 3-D viewer, which May designed. Of course Brian May’s
involvement ensures plenty of publicity for this fascinating title, and there
have already been pieces in the Mail,
the
Scotsman, the
Herald, and the
Independent. It’s by Professor Roger Taylor, who is the world authority
on Wilson, and will be published on 15 August by The London Stereoscopic Company. This will appeal to stereo
photography enthusiasts, collectors of LSC fine art editions; historians tourists
and everyone interested in Scottish culture.
Lots
to look forward from And Other Stories
in the last of the summer's literary festivals, with highlights including author
of Brother In
Ice (pb, £10, 978 1911508205) Alicia Kopf in conversation with Philip Hoare in a very special
event at West
Cork Literary Festival on Garnish
Island which includes a special little boat trip and everything! There’s a
performance of Yuri
Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World (£8.99, pb, 978 1908276421) at the Edinburgh
International Literature Festival. Herrera will be flying over from
the US to take part in this unique event on 25th August. More
information here. Also at Edinburgh will be Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel (21st August), Jen Hodgson (talking
about Ann Quin's
The Unmapped Country) (21st August), and Alicia Kopf (25th
August).
More
excellent coverage of Leila Aboulela’s Elsewhere, Home (£8.99, pb, 978 1846592119) which was
selected as a Guardian
Best Summer Read. The Observer called it “A beautiful and desolate collection … Aboulela’s stories distil many of
her recurring concerns – immigrant loneliness, complicated romance and a
portrayal of the Islamic faith that goes far beyond the cliched narrative – but
without ever becoming trite. … There is so much quiet brilliance that it is a
surprise for those who have only followed Aboulela’s long-form fiction to
discover she has just as much mastery of the short form.” There have also
been features in Lithub,
and interviews on BBC Radio Scotland,
Middle
East Eye, and reviews in The
National, Bookoxygen, and the Herald
who said it was “thoughtful, wry, funny …
The deceptively quiet tales in Elsewhere, Home are
barbed with tension and conflict. There is the desperate homesickness of
immigrants; the complications of love between believers and non-believers … Aboulela’s
interest is with ordinary people, with everyday ambitions and desires.”
Who
daydreams about being a billionaire? And how would you spend your hard-earned
cash? David
McCourt shares just that in the Guardian
here and this highly successful Irish American telecoms entrepreneur also
has plenty to share in his new book which is part business biography, part
business blueprint. Total Rethink: Why Entrepreneurs Should Act Like Revolutionaries (£20, hb, 978 1910453537) has just been published by Red Door. David believes that in
business, and life, everything is changing fast – apart from how we behave. Our
ways of thinking and making decisions have changed little since we lived in
agricultural and industrial societies, but the problems we now need to solve
are entirely different and require a revolution in thinking and behaviour to
meet the challenges that now face us. This book has had good press and is a
genuinely new and insightful way of looking at not just business but the whole
of life. And if you fancy becoming an entrepreneur yourself? Well, David says
that “my new book is about how people can
engage in their creative side as well as business, and it’s for anyone – not
just business people. If anyone comes up to me (or tweets me @DCMcCourt) and
can prove they have read my book, I’ll guarantee to do one of two things: give
them a copy or read their business plan.”
During
the 1920s and 30s, a British journalist, JMN Jeffries followed the events in
Palestine with growing anger, as he saw the effects of the Balfour Declaration
of 1917 on the indigenous Arab inhabitants as they faced the loss of their
rights and their land to a movement, political Zionism, which wanted to take
over Palestine and turn it into a Jewish state. Colin Andersen has written the first ever biography of Jeffries and
of how he came to write his monumental book, Palestine: The Reality, which revealed the truth about the
injustice being inflicted on the Palestinians. Balfour in the Dock (978 1911072225, £16.99, hb) is published by Skyscraper and has just been
shortlisted for the Palestine Book Prize to be awarded in November.
Balfour in the
Dock is a devastating indictment of
British policy in the Middle East and strengthens the growing campaign for an
apology for the Balfour Declaration which has caused such havoc in world
politics over the last hundred years.
At
the age of thirty-six, Gordon Darroch's wife was diagnosed with breast
cancer. It was a devastating blow just as he, and their two children with
autism, were preparing to move to her native Holland. Eighteen months later, as
their plans seemed to be back on course, came the second blow: Magteld was
terminally ill and possibly had only a few months to live. As her health
rapidly deteriorated, they became caught up in a race against time to get a
dying mother home and give their children a future in a country they hardly
knew. All the
Time We Thought We Had (pb, £9.99, 978-1846974472)
is a story of love and loss and a meditation on grief and memory. It's about
how events shape our lives and how we cope with them. And it raises important
questions about what we value in life and the legacies we leave behind. The National Autistic Society will be
promoting this very special book and will do a social media campaign for their
members (600,000 followers) and interview Gordon for their newsletter and
magazine (25,000 print edition for members and online edition too). It’s out in
September from Birlinn.
As
part of their Basque
Literature in Translation Carnival project, Parthian are publishing for the first time in English, two Basque
novels: Her
Mother's Hands by Karmele Jaio and A Glass Eye by Miren Agur Meabe.
One of the bestselling books in the Basque literary scene, Her Mother’s Hands (£8.99, pb, 978 1912109555) is an examination of the
deepest human bonds and a beautiful and moving tribute to life. The precarious
balance in the life of Nerea, a thirty-something journalist, breaks down when
her mother, Luisa, is hospitalised with total amnesia. Nerea, who feels guilty
for not having recognised the symptoms that afflicted her mother, now finds a
person almost unknown to her, but soon she begins to discover that the two
women share much more than they believe. A Glass Eye (pb,
£8.99, 978 1912109548) begins when a woman flees from Spain to France. She is a
writer and she is trying to come to terms with loss after the break-up of a
relationship. The new world offers solace and the practice of writing offers
hope and understanding as she comes to term with the losses in her life. Karmele Jaio is taking part in the Edinburgh International Bookfair in August and Pen
Translates will be releasing information on both titles in their newsletter
and on their website.
Guardian
journalist Claire
Armistead joined the fourth day of
the annual Refugee
Tales Walk in solidarity with asylum
seekers who have suffered under the UK's policy of immigration detention. Read here what she had to say about her experience, and the
influence of fairytale and myth on modern narratives
What’s
your other half’s most irritating habit? If you’re thinking “blimey, where do I
start” then you’ll enjoy this
entertaining piece in the Mail by
Olivia Fane,
the author of Possibly
a Love Story (£8.99, pb, 978 1910050965)
about the smallest things that our partners do can to upset us. Possibly a Love Story is a viciously funny satire on the middle classes and
middle-class values, but with a huge heart, and it’s published by Arcadia. The Mail called it “Surprising,
beautifully written ... hilarious, heartbreaking and thought-provoking”.
How
do you write a story set in 1904 Morocco about a group of missing women when
they do not exist in any public record and when these women are “defined by
their relationship to a man.” That was the task facing Saeida Rouass in her novel Assembly Of The Dead (£8.99,
pb, 978 1907605772) which is published by Impress.
Set in 1904 as Morocco is under threat from the colonial ambitions of France
and Spain; the urbane and wise detective Farouk is sent by the Sultan to
Marrakesh to solve the mystery of the missing girls. This multi layered novel
is grounded in historical truth and detail, and is a captivating journey
through colours, scents and sounds of old Marrakesh, peopled by vivid
characters who perfectly capture the unsettled sensation of changing times and
mingling cultures. Reviewers have compared “this
little pearl of a book … to Umberto Eco’s classical novel The Name of the Rose,
having clear parallels in describing the struggle between the dark ages’ social
and religious control mechanisms and a progressive, scientific approach,
deciding over the destiny of individuals, and of women in particular.”
I
very much enjoyed reading this month’s And
Other Stories blog
which chooses the lovely Harbour
Books in the seaside town of Whitstable, Kent as its bookshop of the month.
Who wouldn’t want to be working beside the sea right now – fancy a job swap
anyone there?!
When
Gerald Grosvenor, sixth Duke of Westminster, died in August 2016 he was one of
the world’s richest men, his fortune estimated at just under £10 billion. Yet
he hated his wealth and spent long periods suffering from severe depression,
much of it brought on by a feeling that his whole life had been a failure and
that his money had destroyed any chance of happiness. The Reluctant Billionaire (hb, £20, 978 1785903168) is by Tom Quinn, who interviewed the sixth
Duke on a number of occasions as well as many people who knew him. The book
looks at the long and often eccentric history of the Grosvenor family and its
wealth and the intriguing means by which that wealth has been shielded from the
taxman; as well as the bizarre life of a complex and tortured man. The Daily Mail will be serialising this one
from 26th July through to the 7th August and it’s published on 7 August by Biteback.
There
was a great review for The Book of Havana (£9.99,
pb, 978 1910974018) this week in Disclaimer Magazine,
who said of the collection “This book
proves what it set out to prove, that Havana, and more widely its surrounding
country, is not simply a remnant of the Cold War, is not a footnote to US
history.” There was also an interview with editor Orsola Casagrande on Booktrail and an extract from one of the stories called The Trinity of Havana on Bookanista.com.
A Perfect
Mother (hb,
£15, 978 0995647848) is a bracing, hypnotic story of midlife crisis about the complexities
of love, relationship and legacy by literary editor Katri Skala. Vesna Goldsworthy,
author of Gorsky called it “a wonderfully accomplished novel...complex
and compulsively readable at the same time... It tells a story of attraction,
parenthood and madness with great psychological subtlety, while also creating
an unforgettable sense of place, equally at home in England and in Italy. I
haven’t encountered as beautiful a portrait of Trieste and its culture in many
years.” It’s published by Hikari
Press in September, and there’s quite a bit of publicity lined up; a 1600-word
spread in the Times T2 at the end of August,
an interview in the Telegraph, and articles
in You Magazine and the Sunday Times as well as reviews coming
in the Economist, Tatler, Sunday Times,
Marie Claire, Nature and The TLS.
There’s also going to be a blog tour at the start of September with The Last Word, Books By Women, Love Books
Group, Portobello Book Blog, Liz Loves Books, The Book Magnet, Writers &
Artists Blog and My Reading Corner
all reading it!
What
was the first official international association football match England ever
played? A nil nil draw with Scotland, which took place at Hamilton Crescent on
30 November 1872! Just one of the fascinating facts you’ll find in England The
Complete Record 1872-2018 (£25, hb, 978
1909245686) by Jack
Gordon Brown and Philip Ross. Fully updated ahead of the 2018 World
Cup, England:
The Complete Record is the definitive
account of one of the world's most recognisable and historic national teams. You
can hear the authors alongside De
Coubertin assistant publisher Megan Pollard on BBC Radio Merseyside talking about the book which is published on
30 August here.
And
on the subject of the English football team, I don’t think it gets much funnier
than this mash-up from
the ever hilarious Cassetteboy!
This weekly blog is
written for the UK book trade. If you would like to order any of the titles
mentioned, then please talk to your Compass Sales Manager, or call the Compass
office on 020 8326 5696. Every Friday an e-newsletter containing highlights
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