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Arcadia Books are pleased to announce the acquisition of UK & Commonwealth rights to an anthology of fiction, reportage and poetry. Giving voice to this most contemporary city there are 40 contributions including pieces by Duncan Campbell, Andrew O’Hagan, Jane Shilling, Helen Simpson, Ali Smith and a number of previously unpublished immigrants and refugees. Taken together, their stories portray the fabric of the city: its housing, its food, its pubs, its buses, even its graveyards. 

There are people working with deprived youth in city, from Kurdish activists, and from tenants’ groups, and with more than a third of the voices belonging to those not born in the UK, this anthology aims to reflect the fact that any city is the sum of its people. 

Memoir, reportage, history and several different genres of poetry spark off each other in challenging, invigorating and inspiring ways. Above all, this compelling anthology questions its citizens and draws on the rich mélange of people who inhabit today’s London, both lamenting the unequal way the city treats them and celebrating the vibrant urban life their co-existence delivers.

The anthology’s editor Claire Armitstead writes:

‘I'm thrilled that Tales of Two Londons is being published by Arcadia because, at this critical time in the UK's history, I feel that these voices need to be heard. Though often represented as a privileged city, London is actually a melting pot roiling with the best and worst of us - with anger, humour, hope and despair. By collecting a wide range of writing, from journalists, short story writers and poets, new arrivals as well as established authors, this anthology aims to offer a snapshot of our globalised society in all its complexity - and to demonstrate that a city is everything that exists in its citizens' heads. ‘

Piers Russell-Cobb, the publisher of Arcadia Books commented on the acquisition: ‘These stories connect all of us who live and work in London and make us appreciate the real bonds that connect us rather than the artificial which separate us.  We’re continuing our ethic in publishing edgy literary writing from wherever it hails.’ 

Alex Wheatle, the critically acclaimed author of Brixton Rock, will be appearing at Wigtown Book Festival on Saturday 22nd September to talk about his latest novel, Home Boys.

Inspired by his own experiences of growing up in care, Home Boys tells the story of four friends who run away from their children's home in search of freedom, but what they discover in the forest will change their lives forever.

Tickets cost £5/free for under 25s and are available here: http://wigtownbookfestival.com/visit/ticket-offers-passes …

Here is a video of Ed Gorman speaking at the event for the launch of his debut book, Death of a Translator. 

Death of a Translator is a seeringly honest description of a mind haunted and eventually paralysed by the terror of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It follows a young Ed as he naviagtes war-torn Afghanistan and tries to make a name for himself as a news correspondent. After that summer in Kabul province, the young freelancer became a staff reporter for The Times of London, covering conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Gulf, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Balkans but Afghanistan never let him go.

'I have never read anything that so fully and perfectly captured the personal experience and the personal aftermath of war.  This is a brave book. Ed Gorman has a lonely struggle, but, excellent reporter that he is, he shows us how the struggle is not his alone.' PJ O'Rourke

‘By turns gripping, enlightening and deeply moving, Ed Gorman’s story should be required reading for any editor in charge of sending journalists into harm’s way.’ Matthew Green, author of Aftershock

Available to buy now from Amazon: http://amzn.to/2txBY6K

(Video Credit: James Grindel)

Interstate,  the second book by Julian Sayarer to be published by Arcadia, has overcome competition including from travel writing legend Paul Theroux to win the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award. 

Chair of Judges, travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler, said: “The decision was unanimous. Sayarer is a brilliantly thoughtful writer with no shortage of passion and anger. As befits the story of a road trip, the prose is the opposite of pedestrian: it is challenging and enigmatic – its power derives in part from what is left out. One can’t help thinking that the future of travel writing lies in this adventurous, post-modern genre.” 

Interstate tells the story of Sayarer, finding a project in New York city cancelled, deciding to hitchhike to San Francisco. Revisiting this timeless American journey finds an unseen nation in rough shape. Along the road are homeless people and anarchists who have dropped out of society altogether, and blue-collar Americans who seem to have lost all meaning in forgotten towns and food deserts. Helped along by roadside communities and encounters that somehow keep a sense of optimism alive, Interstate: Hitchhiking Through the State of a Nation grapples with the fault lines in US society. It tells a tale of Steinbeck and Kerouac, set against the indifference of the vast US landscape and the frustrated energy of American culture and politics at the start of a new century.

Julian Sayarer is an author, journalist, and is often called an adventurer, although normally by other people. He has cycled six times across Europe, hitchhiked across the United States, and in 2009 broke the 18,000-mile world record for a circumnavigation by bicycle. A politics graduate, Julian's writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, New Statesman, Aeon Magazine, and many others, including a host of cycling publications. He writes slow travel, his writing from the roadside a 12mph view of the world in passing.