GREEN LION BY HENRIETTA ROSE-INNES OUT IN THE UK TODAY And catch her at Edinburgh International Book Festival!

GREEN LION by Henrietta Rose-Innes is published in the UK today by Aardvark Bureau, who published her prize-winning NINEVEH last year. This masterful novel, published in South Africa by Umuzi and in France by Editions Zoe, has already drawn much praise and received a 5-star review from Lara Feigel in the Telegraph this weekend. Patrick Flanery described it as ‘poignant and unsentimental, an urgent story of quiet, lurking terror’, while Ivan Vladislavić says that ‘in GREEN LION Henrietta Rose-Innes has written another extraordinary novel, lyrical, deftly plotted, and as full of life as the Ark.’

When a lion at a breeding park mauls an old school friend, Con steps in as the keeper of Sekhmet, the last remaining Cape black-maned lioness in the world. As he grows steadily more bonded to his enigmatic charge, a cult of animal lovers with obscure alchemical aims seeks to claim the lioness as their own. When she escapes, Sekhmet engulfs the city’s imagination, stirring up rumours of terror and magic and in Con’s quest to track her down, he must enter the wilderness of a cordoned-off Table Mountain – and his own dark history.

On today’s publication day readers can also catch Henrietta at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She will be talking about GREEN LION at 20:30 with author Cynan Jones at the Baillie Gifford Corner Theatre and will also take part in Amnesty International’s Imprisoned Writers series from 17:30-18:15, where readings will highlight the dangers of being a journalist on the front line. For tickets find the link here. At 18:30 on Tuesday 22 August Henrietta will be speaking at Golden Hare Books in Edinburgh. For more information see here.  For London readers Belgravia Books will launch GREEN LION on 5 September.

More praise for GREEN LION:
'Beautifully written, with prose that is mixed with poetry and power GREEN LION has sent me off looking for more work by Henrietta Rose-Innes.' – Paul McVeigh

'What’s being explored, and it’s a theme that feels oddly neglected in contemporary fiction, is the relationship between humans and animals and with nature more generally…[Henrietta uses these lions as] a lens in which to examine her country’s history as a troubled moment… In Rose Innes’s hands, the beast becomes less a political symbol than a personal one… This is a novel that is unafraid of symbolism but manages not to seem heavy handed… If there is an inner Lion in us all, as Rose Innes seems to suggest, her prose weaving between muscular and lyrical, is well equipped to capture what this might feel like… The question for [Rose-Innes’] characters is how to live without repressing its roar or succumbing to it fully.’ — Lara Feigel, The Telegraph, 5 star review

‘So many moments of glorious observations and beautifully rendered prose …GREEN LION is one of my favourite books of the year so far, and a journey I will certainly be taking again. On top of that, Henrietta Rose-Innes is a glorious writer who manages to write about mankind and the natural world, without taking sides.’ — Paul Dawson

‘Rose-Inne s reveals an unflinching embrace of the messiness of human and animal life, and their troubled interactions … the depth of Rose-Innes' characterisation makes GREEN LION a satisfying read.’ – The Book Bag

‘In GREEN LION Henrietta Rose-Innes has written another extraordinary novel, lyrical, deftly plotted, and as full of life as the Ark. In the Cape Town of her imagination, a place both utterly strange and eerily familiar, wildness is always pressing up against the fence. The ‘animal’, she suggests, is not just out there but in here, shaping what we do and say, embedded in language itself like a stubborn gene.’ – Ivan Vladislavić

Praise for Henrietta Rose-Innes
'Rose-Innes is a writer almost in the Virginia Woolf mould – lateral of mind and poetic in her style of narration.' – Leon de Kock, Sunday Time

‘Henrietta Rose-Innes is a master of the beautifully thought-out metaphor. Her prose is elegant and liquid.’ – Cape Times

 About Henrietta Rose-Innes
Henrietta is the author of four novels and one book of short stories. She was winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing 2008 (for which she was shortlisted in 2007), the PEN Short Story Prize 2007, and awarded the Runner-Up prize for her short story 'Sanctuary' at the BBC International Short Story Awards 2012. Her novel, NINEVEH, was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Fiction Prize (South Africa), the M-Net Prize 2012 and won the Francois Sommer Literary Prize.

Find out more about Henrietta Rose-Innes on her  website.

Follow her on Twitter.

Aardvark Bureau signs two-book deal with prize-winning South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes

Aardvark Bureau has acquired UK and BC rights (ex Canada and Southern Africa) to the novels NINEVEH and GREEN LION by acclaimed South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes. The deal was brokered by Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedmann.

NINEVEH was shortlisted for South Africa’s most prestigious literary award, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, in 2012. GREEN LION is currently a finalist for the same award, with the winner due to be announced this weekend.

Both novels convey a strong sense of the Cape Town where Rose-Innes grew up, with Table Mountain looming physically and symbolically large. They explore the tensions between the natural and man-made worlds, and the ways in which we perceive the animal kingdom – beguiling, semi-mystical, endangered and dangerous, familiar and unknowable.

NINEVEH, to be published simultaneously in November 2016 by Aardvark Bureau in the UK and BC and by Unnamed Press in the USA, tells the story of Katya Grubbs, Cape Town’s only ethical pest removal specialist. When called to tackle a mysterious infestation at a new luxury housing development on the fringes of the city, Katya finds herself having to deal with unwelcome intrusions from the past.

In GREEN LION (autumn 2017), Con steps in as the keeper of Sekhmet, the world’s last remaining black-maned lioness, when his school friend is mauled at a breeding zoo. Drawn to the powerful creature, he finds himself testing the boundaries that separate the animal and human worlds, and reliving dark moments of his own history.

Jane Aitken says: In these two masterful novels, Henrietta Rose-Innes’s beautiful prose intrigues, entrances and entertains. We are thrilled to bring Rose-Innes to the UK market.

Henrietta Rose-Innes says: I'm tremendously excited to introduce my books to readers in the UK and elsewhere – and I can't think of a better home for them than Aardvark Bureau, with its fresh and adventurous list of global titles.

Praise for Henrietta Rose-Innes:

‘Henrietta Rose-Innes writes an admirably taut, clean prose. … A welcome addition to the new South African literature.’ – J M Coetzee

‘GREEN LION sees humanity’s longing for the wildness of animals as a desire for what remains most alien in our rational selves ... Poignant and unsentimental, this is an urgent story of quiet, lurking terror.' – Patrick Flanery, author of Absolution

‘A gripping, thrilling allegory of a troubled nation, NINEVEH is executed with wit, panache, precision and something that I can only call wounded love for the country the author calls her home.’ – Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others

‘Rose-Innes’s writing is as entertaining as it is subtle – a rare combination.’ – Steven Amsterdam, author of Things We Didn’t See Coming

‘Henrietta Rose-Innes is a master of the beautifully thought-out metaphor. Her prose is elegant and liquid.’ – Cape Times

‘Rose-Innes is a writer almost in the Virginia Woolf mould – lateral of mind and poetic in her style of narration.’ – SA Sunday Times

‘With its crisp style, infused with caustic humour, NINEVEH places Henrietta Rose-Innes without contest among the most important voices of the new South African literature.’ – Le Monde

‘A compellingly enigmatic story, [2008 Caine Prize winner] POISON’s few pages are also an eloquent vignette of the “new” South Africa.’ – The Guardian

About the author:

Henrietta Rose-Innes is a novelist and short story writer from Cape Town, currently living in the UK while completing a PhD at the University of East Anglia. She won the Caine Prize for African Writing 2008 and the HSBC / PEN Short Story Prize 2007 and was runner-up in the BBC Short Story Award 2012. Her work is included in the Granta Book of the African Short Story (2011) and has been published in a number of languages, including French, Spanish and German.

For press enquiries and interview requests, please contact Sophie Goodfellow or Emma Draude: sophie@edpr.co.uk / emma@edpr.co.uk

For rights enquiries, please contact Isobel Dixon: isobel@blakefriedmann.co.uk

BFLA Authors in best of 2015 lists

It’s that time of year again when everyone's sharing their ‘Best of’ lists, and we’re extremely proud that our authors have been included in many of them. Below is a summary of the great places they were included and the great quotes that accompanied their pick.

RECIPES FOR LOVE AND MURDER by Sally Andrew

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2015:
"A delightful debut, tender and funny. The mystery takes on the worldwide problem of abused women while revealing both the beauties and problems of South Africa. And the recipes will make you want to drop everything and start cooking."

Wall Street Journal Best Mystery Book of 2015:
“The exotic locale, the lovely patois and the heroine’s unique sensibility make Ms. Andrew’s “Recipes” a blue-ribbon winner.”

Samantha Gibb, Sunday Times SA Best book of 2015:
“The quintessential feel-good SA whodunit, complete with recipes and advice. A must read.”

LUNGDON by Edward Carey

NPR Guide to 2015’s Great Reads:
“A magnificently engrossing indictment of our late capitalist modernity.”

THE FETCH by Finuala Dowling

Margaret von Klemperer, Fiona Snyckers & Helené Prinsloo, Sunday Times SA Best book of 2015:
‘A sparkling comedy of manners, but under the froth there are serious issues, and it is Dowling’s sensitive handling of them that makes this such a lovely book’ – Margaret von Klemperer

‘Comparisons with Jane Austen are not misplaced.’ – Fiona Snyckers

‘The characters from THE FETCH by Finuala Dowling haunted my dreams. The story led me to a garden cottage in the deep south where I kept waiting to happen upon someone like William.’ – Helené Prinsloo

THE DARKEST HOUR by Barbara Erskine

Books Covered, Favourite Book Covers of 2015:
‘Tender, romantic, and earnest, just like the brilliant story within. The gold foil adds a luxuriousness without being flashy and the whole designs speaks of the era so perfectly. This is a standout cover in this area of the market.’

JELLYFISH by Janice Galloway

Zoe Strachan, The Herald:
‘Janice Galloway prefaces her new collection of stories, JELLYFISH (Freight, £12.99), with a quote from David Lodge: “Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life’s the other way round.” In fact she gives us plenty of both, but it’s the stories about mothers and children that really cut to the quick.’

Sara Crowley and Kaite Welsh, Bristol Prize Best Short Story Reads of 2015:
‘My most eagerly awaited publication of 2015 was Janice Galloway’s JELLYFISH (Freight) which I am reading very slowly so as to savour each brilliant word.’ – Sara Crowley

‘Galloway has hit a rich seam of imagination as she returns to the short story as a form. It’s perfect for her style – wry, slightly off-kilter and always returning to the theme of parent and child, the kind of subject matter that offers Galloway the chance to delve once more into the murky depths of human relationships.’ – Kaite Welsh

Scots Whay Hae! Best Books of 2015:
‘Janice Galloway has always been an innovative and playful writer, but never to the detriment of her prose… JELLYFISH is a timely reminder that she is one of the finest writers around. Each story, each sentence, is beautifully crafted by someone who cares enough to take such care… If you read a better book than Jellyfish this year you are a very lucky person indeed.’

THE NEED FOR BETTER REGULATION OF OUTER SPACE by Pippa Goldschmidt

Alice Thompson, The Herald:
‘In these stories, the powerful juxtaposition of scientific intellect and emotional frailty is played out engagingly. The stories also imply no matter how objective scientific genius is, the scientists themselves, like the rest of us, are subject to moral failings.’

YOU ARE DEAD by Peter James

Guardian Best Crime and Thriller books of 2015:
‘Peter James showed that a diversion this year into ghost stories with THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL had not diverted energy from his consistently impressive sequence of DS Roy Grace policiers, the 11th of which, YOU ARE DEAD (Macmillan), confidently combines a cold case with a very hot one.’

THE LAST PILOT by Benjamin Johncock

Isabella Costello Literary Sofa ‘My Year in Books’:
‘Ben Johncock’s debut has all the things I love about American fiction and he’s not even American. Gorgeous spare prose, authentic sense of time and place, a poignant story told with sensitivity and restraint – I have raved about this book so much it’s embarrassing.’

Reading Groups’ Staff Picks for 2015:
‘With echoes of Tom Wolfe’s THE RIGHT STUFF and Richard Yates’ REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, THE LAST PILOT re-ignites the thrill and excitement of the space race through the story of one man’s courage in the face of unthinkable loss.’

Ian Rankin’s End of Year Roundup

Utter Biblio, Top 10 of 2015

ICARUS by Deon Meyer

Financial Times’ Crime Books of the Year

Boston Globe's Best Mystery Books of 2015:
‘An ashleymadison.com-style website-related murder and a parallel plot that delves into the dregs of South Africa’s wine industry keep Benny Griessel and his cadre of Cape Town coppers on their toes.’

GREEN LION by Henrietta Rose-Innes

Ben Williams, Fiona Snyckers & Jennifer Malec, Sunday Times SA Best book of 2015:
‘And if readers missed Henrietta Rose-Innes’s GREEN LION (Umuzi) … they’d best not let 2015 expire without acquainting themselves’ – Ben Williams

‘Rose-Innes goes from strength to strength, refining her craft with each new book.’ – Fiona Snyckers

‘Masterful’ – Jennifer Malec

THE FOLLY by Ivan Vladislavic

Flavorwire’s 15 Worthwhile Books You Might Have Missed in 2015:
‘Praised by the likes of Coetzee and others — it’s not hard to see why…’

101 DETECTIVES by Ivan Vladislavic

Michelle Magwood, Jennifer Malec & Sophie Kohler Sunday Times SA Best book of 2015:
‘Mordantly funny, acutely perceptive and exquisitely styled, this collection of short stories is a definitive showcase of Vladislavic’s talents.’ – Michelle Magwood

‘Witty, enthralling and pleasurably disorientating.’ – Jennifer Malec

‘The stories are bewildering in their refusal to provide a clear resolution, but this is to their credit, in that each leaves a mystery to be solved.’ – Sophie Kohler

THE A WONG COOKBOOK by Andrew Wong

 Rose Prince, Spectator Best New Cookery Books 2015:
‘There is food in A Wong: The Cookbook (Mitchell Beazley, £25) for home cooks, but it is also a chef’s book. May every aspiring one buy it. If they did, Chinese food in Britain would go through a true revolution.’

Observer 25 best food books 2015:
‘At his Pimlico restaurant, Wong is keen to prove that Chinese food can be just as considered as other, more revered cuisines.’

GREEN LION BY HENRIETTA ROSE-INNES OUT NOW IN SOUTH AFRICA

GREEN LION by Henrietta Rose-Innes is published this month in South Africa by Umuzi, an imprint of Penguin Random House SA. Unsettling and moving, GREEN LION is a page-turning story of containment and freedom, power and loss, examining the borderline between human and animal, and revealing the beast that crawls under every skin, itching to escape.

 GREEN LION made its first appearance at the Franschhoek Literary Festival in South Africa, where Henrietta spoke on two author panels. It will be launched this Thursday at Kalk Bay Books.

 GREEN LION will be published in French translation by Edtions Zoe in 2016.

 Henrietta is the author of four novels and one book of short stories. She was winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing 2008 (for which she was shortlisted in 2007), the PEN Short Story Prize 2007, and awarded the Runner-Up prize for her short story 'Sanctuary' at the BBC International Short Story Awards 2012. Her novel, NINEVEH, was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Fiction Prize (South Africa), the M-Net Prize 2012 and won the Francois Sommer Literary Prize.

 She has degrees in archaeology and biology and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town and is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. For more information on Henrietta, please visit her website.

 Praise for GREEN LION:

 ‘In GREEN LION Henrietta Rose-Innes has written another extraordinary novel, lyrical, deftly plotted, and as full of life as the Ark. In the Cape Town of her imagination, a place both utterly strange and eerily familiar, wildness is always pressing up against the fence. The ‘animal’, she suggests, is not just out there but in here, shaping what we do and say, embedded in language itself like a stubborn gene.’ – Ivan Vladislavić

 ‘Remarkable new novel: an eccentric, dream-like meditation … The novel’s idiosyncrasy is welcome in a place where the stories we agree to tell ourselves about “nature” are often so predictable … Her prose is minutely alert to what George Steiner called “teeming strangeness and menace” of the organic presence all around us, and the pressure that it exerts at the borders of our understanding … Pulsing behind it all is a something deeply sorrowful: a work of mourning for both the human losses within the book but also the life forms that are vanishing from the earth beyond … GREEN LION reads as a local requiem for this global story: for the vast planetary die-off that is mostly happening outside language, that is both immeasurably sad and inescapably “natural”. Rose-Innes’s work seeks out ways of honouring our animal ghosts and keeping them, in some small and symbolic measure, alive.’ – Hedley Twidle, BooksLIVE

 Praise for Henrietta Rose-Innes:

 'Rose-Innes is a writer almost in the Virginia Woolf mould – lateral of mind and poetic in her style of narration.' – Leon de Kock, Sunday Times

 ‘Henrietta Rose-Innes is a master of the beautifully thought-out metaphor. Her prose is elegant and liquid.’ – Cape Times

NINEVEH and GREEN LION: Prizes, Praise & a Surprising Cover

Henrietta Rose-Innes has won the François Sommer Literary Prize for her novel NINEVEH, which was published in France last year by Editions Zoe.

The prize is awarded to novels and literary works published in French that explore the relationship between humans and nature and support “the values of humanistic ecology”. It is worth €15,000. You can see some lovely photos of Henrietta collecting her prize and signing books below:

NINEVEH was first published in South Africa by Umuzi in 2011. When Humane Pest Relocation Expert KD is hired to cleanse the vermin-invested Nineveh walled estate, her boundaries begin to crumble. Swamp water sweeps into Nineveh just as KD's past returns to her. The novel was Shortlisted for Sunday Times Fiction Prize 2012 and the M-Net Prize 2012. Mexican rights have just been acquired by Almadia.

Henrietta’s latest novel, GREEN LION, is published in May by Umuzi in South Africa, who recently revealed their stunning cover, alongside an interview with its designer. You can read more about GREEN LION in this interview with Henrietta, who describes the novel as ‘an exploration of human relationships with the natural world, even more explicitly so than Nineveh. At the heart of the book is the figure of a black-maned lion, one of vanished sub-species that used to be common in the Cape. It’s a book about extinctions, and loss, and the impossibility of bringing things back from oblivion; and also about the mythic importance of animals in human lives.’

Praise for GREEN LION:

‘In GREEN LION Henrietta Rose-Innes has written another extraordinary novel, lyrical, deftly plotted, and as full of life as the Ark. In the Cape Town of her imagination, a place both utterly strange and eerily familiar, wildness is always pressing up against the fence. The ‘animal’, she suggests, is not just out there but in here, shaping what we do and say, embedded in language itself like a stubborn gene.’ – Ivan Vladislavić

‘GREEN LION sees humanity’s longing for the wildness of animals as a desire for what remains most alien in our rational selves. Catching the animal heart in all of us, Rose-Innes imagines a world where ferocity itself is pushed to the brink of extinction. Poignant and unsentimental, this is an urgent story of quiet, lurking terror.' – Patrick Flanery

Praise for NINEVEH:

‘A gripping allegory … executed with wit, panache, and precision.’ – Neel Mukherjee

‘A passionate homage to place and a sensuous exploration of metamorphosis.’ – BooksLIVE