BOOKS
Category Spotlight Discover: November
Category Spotlight
Discover: November L
A preview of new titles published in November 2024
Transitions of all kinds, from countries, people, language and death itself are prevalent in November’s offerings, together with new and début works from multiple award winners
iminalit is the main thread running through our preview this November. Sarah Grant’s Hero
(Verve Poetry Press) explores the relation- ships artists have between the two halves of themselves, while Juana Adcock’s I Sugar the Bones (Out-Spoken Press) explores the crossing of borders between countries, people, languages and the veil between life and death. Meanwhile, V S Naipaul’s Half a Life (Picador) interrogates the half-lives quietly lived out at the centre of our world.
’Tis also the season of the prizewinner!
Natasha Onwuemezi @tashaonwuemezi
We’re seeing many award recipients releasing their new—and in some cases very first—published work this month.
Category highlights
Fiona Williams, who won the 2021 Bridport Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award, is releasing the paperback edition of her début The House of Broken Bricks with Faber; Adam Zmith, 2022 winner of the Polari First Book Prize, is now publishing a non-fiction title, Solemates, with 404 Ink; and Kim Hyesoon, the recipient of the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, now releases Phantom Pain Wings with And Other Stories. Another award-winning poet is Susie Wilson, winner of the Disabled Poets Prize 2024. Her début pamphlet collection is coming out this month with Verve Poetry Press.
Literary Curtis Garner
Isaac Verve Books, 28th, £10.99, pb, 9780857308658
Submissions Category Spotlights preview forthcoming titles within a certain genre. For submission guidelines and publication dates, visit
thebookseller.com/ publishing-calendar. The next Category Spotlight will be New Titles: Non-Fiction (Jan 2025) in the 11th October issue.
TheBookseller.com
Set across a single life-altering summer, this powerful coming- of-age story explores masculinity and queer- ness in the digital age and offers a fresh take on desire and intimacy, adolescent obsession and dangerous first love. It was written in response to the ubiquity of “straight- acting”, “masc4masc” Grindr culture and the femmephobia that Garner has experienced.
Social history
Jieun Kiaer Whose Language
is English? Yale University Press, 26th £20, hb, 9780300264050
Exploring coinages such as “flexitarian,” “MeToo,” and “shitizen”, this is an exhilarating tour through the English language, from British colonialism to social media. Linguistics professor Kiaer explores how global phenomena such as Covid, social media, or AI language models, have influenced the use of English around the globe—and argues that words are now made by ordinary people rather than linguistic authorities.
Historical fiction
Susan C Wilson Helen’s Judgement Neem Tree Press, 7th, £9.99, pb, 9781911107637
This retelling of the epic tale of Helen of Troy uncovers the complexities of the titular character—a woman tormented by the blame placed on her by others, and tortured by her own guilt. The second title in Wilson’s House of Atreus trilogy; the first, Clytemnestra’s Bind, was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition 2019.
Literary
William Saroyan The Daring Young Man on the
Flying Trapeze Faber Editions, 7th, £9.99, pb, 9780571383481
A bestseller on publica- tion in 1934, this is the début collection from Pulitzer Prize-winning Armenian-American writer Saroyan. “Fusing Whitman’s transcend- ence with the eccentric characterisation of Steinbeck and Salinger, his prose is a heart- expanding experience that intoxicates to this day,” says the publisher. These tales of immigrant life in 1930s US are introduced by superfan Stephen Fry.
Literary
Yuri Herrera, Lisa Dillman (trans)
Season of the Swamp And Other Stories, 5th, £14.99, pb, 9781916751101
Exploring slavery and US history from the perspective of an outsider who is also a person of colour, this work of speculative fiction delves into the mystery of Mexico’s first Indigenous president and his 18-month exile in New Orleans. The first full-length novel from the author of Signs Preceding the End of the World, which has so far sold 70,000+ copies in And Other Stories’ editions, according to the publisher.
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