I have been asked to write a few words about the origins of my debut novel, Valentine. This should be a simple enough task, and one that every writer who is fortunate enough to sell her book should be prepared to complete in a timely fashion. How did I get the idea for the book? How long did it take to write? Where do my characters come from? How much of the book is autobiographical? And yet, shortly after I sold my book, when this question was first posed to me in an “author’s profile,” I sat at my desk, on and off, for weeks, trying to figure out how to answer the simplest of questions about a book that I had privately been calling “this damn book” for nearly a decade.
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The 30th April would have been publication day for Kirstin Innes fantastic new novel Scabby Queen before the pandemic caused the release date to be delayed. To mark the occasion, Kirstin shared some of the inspiration behind the novel on Twitter, answered readers’ questions, and gave us a sneak peak with a couple of readings from the book.
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The story of a tangled inheritance
I began writing Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract almost ten years ago, after learning that I couldn’t have children. Instead of looking forward to the family I’d always imagined I’d have, I turned round to face the past; it was time I found out about those who’d come before me.
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We are delighted to announce that Valeria Luiselli has won the 2020 Rathbones Folio Prize for her third novel, Lost Children Archive. The novel follows a family in New York who set out on a road trip but is told poetically through multiple perspectives especially from the migrant children who take treacherous journeys across the U.S. border from Central America.
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As the weather gradually gets warmer and the sun creeps out from behind the clouds, it’s almost time to head into the garden with a book. With so many books published each month, it can be quite intimidating to decide what books to read first. Well, worry no further. We’ve got you sorted with everything we’re publishing from March to May. From the biggest book of the year and thrilling debuts, to moving memoirs and family history, 4th Estate has a book for everyone.
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In 2009, Hilary Mantel was an author already acclaimed for her fiction and memoir-writing, having been awarded, among other prizes, the MIND Book of the Year and the Cheltenham Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. But the arrival of Wolf Hall would transform Mantel into a household name.
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Nothing makes a book more readable than discovering that a world a million miles away – or five hundred years ago – shares the same concerns as our own.
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The two Cromwell novels are teeming with dualities and divisions.
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