Canongate Books

Canongate Books Publisher. Always independent. And twice we’ve won Publisher of the Year.

Canongate is an independent publisher: since 1973 we’ve worked to unearth and amplify the most vital, innovative voices we can find, wherever they come from, and we’ve published all kinds of books – thoughtful, upsetting, gripping, beatific, vulgar, chaste, unrepentant, life-changing . . . Along the way there have been landmarks of fiction – including Alasdair Gray’s masterpiece Lanark, and Yann M

artel’s Life of Pi, the best-ever-selling Booker winner – and non-fiction too. We’ve published an American president and a Guantanamo detainee; we’ve campaigned for causes we believe in and fought court cases to get our authors heard. We’re still independent, and we’re as committed to unorthodox and innovative publishing as ever.

We are delighted to share the UK cover for the new book from award-winning author Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, coming in Ma...
02/12/2025

We are delighted to share the UK cover for the new book from award-winning author Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, coming in May next year.

The Edge of Space Time takes readers to the boundaries of the universe, inviting us to spend time at the edge of what we know about space-time, and about ourselves, through pop culture, poetry and theoretical physics.

Pre-order yours now! Link in bio.

‘With this extraordinary book, Prescod-Weinstein cements her status as one of the most accomplished and important science writers of our time’ Ed Yong, author of An Immense World.
‘A great read for any human being who lives in the universe’ Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
‘A lyrical, genre-defying exploration of the universe’ Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology
‘Whatever you thought you would learn about space-time, you’ll get that and so much more from this deft weave of quantum physics and cultural wisdom’ Moiya McTier, author of The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Happy Scottish Book Week! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿At Canongate we are proud to publish a wide range of Scottish literature, from ...
21/11/2025

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Happy Scottish Book Week! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

At Canongate we are proud to publish a wide range of Scottish literature, from the classics to the contemporary.
This Scottish Book Week we wanted to shout about this handsome (and very blue) stack of books.

How many have you read?

——

THE QUARRY WOOD by Nan Shepherd
When Martha accepts a place at university, her decision is met with a mixture of hostility and pride by her uncomprehending family. This is the story of a young woman’s journey to maturity and independence, struggling to cope with the intellectual and emotional challenges that surround her, at a time when such space was rarely given freely to women.

THAT BEAUTIFUL ATLANTIC WALTZ by Malachy Tallack
Set in Shetland, That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz is a soulful and moving exploration of the notion of home and belonging, from one of Scotland’s trailblazing literary writers.

POYUMS ANNAW by Len Pennie
A formidable follow-up to her award-winning debut poetry collection, Len Pennie’s poyums annaw is just like her: defiant, angry and trailblazing. These poems are a call to arms, confronting ideas of patriarchy, gender-based violence and societal injustice with equal parts tenderness, quick-wit and righteous fury.

THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES by Muriel Spark
In settings that range from South Africa to the Portobello Road, Muriel Spark probes the idiosyncrasies that lurk beneath the veneer of human respectability, displaying the acerbic wit and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her unique talent.

THE TWO ROBERTS by Damian Barr
Meet Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: artists, lovers, outsiders. From 1930s Glasgow to wartime London, The Two Roberts is a captivating novel inspired by their wild lives.

THE DEATH OF SHAME by Ambrose Parry
1854, Edinburgh. Respectable faces hide private sins.
The fifth instalment in the thrilling Raven and Fisher series exploring the exploitation of women in the Victorian era.

’It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide‘ said last n...
20/11/2025

’It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide‘ said last night, when One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

And he’s right, it‘s a powerful, vital, deeply considered and humane book that we are -so- proud to publish, and in that sense, we are glad to see it recognised in this way, but it’s a book that in a just world would never be. It is a book which unpicks our Western system – one that enables genocide, that enables the ongoing persecution of the Palestinian people. A system that must be resisted, which is riddled with hypocrisies and injustices which must be held to record. One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This is a book for those that have tired of moral emptiness and everyone who wants something better.

“Unique and urgently needed” Naomi Klein
“Urgent, essential, and profound. A lightning bolt” Riz Ahmed
“Full of well-earned rage… a must-read” Dina Nayeri, Guardian

What if we ride out tonight?What if we ride out and never once look back?Kevin Barry‘s savagely funny, achingly beautifu...
20/11/2025

What if we ride out tonight?
What if we ride out and never once look back?

Kevin Barry‘s savagely funny, achingly beautiful Western THE HEART IN WINTER has won the Historical Writer’s Association Gold Crown Award!

The judges said: ’In 1890s Montana, a mail-order bride falls for a messed-up Irishman and together they flee into a frozen wilderness pursued by crazed bounty-hunters. Funny, gripping and stylistically brilliant, this is a poetic love story as well as a classic Western adventure’

Congratulations Kevin! The Heart in Winter is out now, available in all good local bookshops & online (link in the bio)

FOREIGN FRUIT is a beautiful hybrid memoir from which we all fell in love with. It uses the journey and cultivation of ...
20/11/2025

FOREIGN FRUIT is a beautiful hybrid memoir from which we all fell in love with. It uses the journey and cultivation of a single fruit – the orange – to reckon with her own identity and unpack themes of globalisation, colonialism and migration.

We’re delighted to see it chosen as the Non-Fiction Debut of the Year!

‘A sharp-sweet memoir of change, identity and hybridity. I loved it’ KATHERINE MAY, author of Wintering

‘Superbly reflective, restive and revealing . . . Goh is a bold new voice’ Irish Times

You can get your copy today – link in the bio.

Happy PUBLICATION DAY to these four incredible books!WORDS ARE MY MATTER – WILD DARK SHORE – BORDERLINE FICTION – THE NO...
06/11/2025

Happy PUBLICATION DAY to these four incredible books!
WORDS ARE MY MATTER –
WILD DARK SHORE –
BORDERLINE FICTION –
THE NORTH SEA – Alistair Moffat
------
WORDS ARE MY MATTER is a selection of Ursula K. Le Guin’s best writing on literature, articulating with precision and passion her belief in the social and political value of storytelling – especially in hard times. In doing so, and with her characteristic spirit, Le Guin offers both a glimmer of hope and a set of operating instructions for a life lived with meaning.

‘Splendid. A clarion call for resistance, reminding us that any broken system is fixable, and that the fixing falls on our own participatory hands’ Marginalian

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force. A novel of breathtaking twists and dizzying beauty, WILD DARK SHORE is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love.

‘To read this exceptionally imagined, thoroughly humane novel feels like following the last people on Earth as they prepare to leave some part of their souls to the most beautiful place they'll ever know’ Washington Post

Told through two parallel narratives – one past, one present – BORDERLINE FICTION is a highly original and deeply affecting contemporary tale written with an intensity of emotion and vulnerability. A close-up, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes funny examination of what it means to be a young black man navigating today’s world.

‘Borderline Fiction is that rare thing - a novel which is simultaneously melancholic, wise, tender and funny’ Camilla Grudova

In THE NORTH SEA, renowned historian Alistair Moffat spends a year travelling its shores to better understand our relationship to the sea. He takes us on an epic, sweeping history from the Kentish coast to flooded homes, crossing wild fenland and Brexit fault lines, visiting well-worn seaside towns and windswept island monasteries.

‘A rollicking, surprising, often moving personal history of a big part of the British story that has long needed its own narrative. Page-turningly entertaining’ Andrew Marr

05/11/2025

Dear stranger. Are you home? Do you feel at home? For how much longer?

Revealing the cover for Ece Temelkuran’s new book, Nation of Strangers – this is a book for anyone who feels alienated by an ever-more monstrous world. It shows how, as we all become strangers, our home will depend on the strength we find with one another. In a series of letters meditating on all the ways we are losing our homes – physically, morally, spiritually, politically, .temelkuran delivers a powerful and consoling reappraisal of the concept of exile, migration and home.

Copies are available to pre-order now, via the link in our bio, from in the UK, in The Netherlands, in Italy, in Germany and in Spain, with more to follow.

‘The most urgent and
necessary book of our times’
Michael Morpurgo

‘Her most ambitious and
dazzling book yet’
Brian Eno

‘Crackling with intelligence,
insight and generosity’
Kamila Shamsie

‘As conceptually illuminating
as it is beautifully written’
Omar El Akkad

‘Ece Temelkuran is in serious
danger of becoming the new
Hannah Arendt’
Yanis Varoufakis .varoufakis

‘Reading Nation of Strangers
was like hearing from a friend’
Denise Gough

RAISING HARE, Chloe Dalton’s magical true story of the injured hare who taught her how to live again has won the Reader...
04/11/2025

RAISING HARE, Chloe Dalton’s magical true story of the injured hare who taught her how to live again has won the Readers Award for Non-Fiction 2025!

Congratulations to , and thank you to the readers and booksellers who’ve connected with Hare.


Awards sponsored by

04/11/2025

How many can we find at ?

The answer was EIGHT! Though I did pop in again later and found even more 😂📚

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃To celebrate we’re sharing some our most haunting fiction 👻ODDBODY by Rose KeatingA collection of te...
31/10/2025

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃
To celebrate we’re sharing some our most haunting fiction 👻
ODDBODY by Rose Keating
A collection of ten bold and unsettling short stories that confront themes of desire, fear and shame, each one asking how far the bounds of the human form can be pushed, stretched – and subverted.
THE HAUNTED BOOK by Jeremy Dyson
In 2009 Jeremy Dyson was contacted by a journalist wanting help bringing together accounts of true life ghost stories from across the British Isles. The Haunted Book chronicles the journey Dyson, formerly a hardened sceptic, went on to uncover the truth behind these tales.
THE RADLEYS by Matt Haig
A darkly comic novel about a family of vampires from the bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive, How to Stop Time and The Midnight Library.
MY NAME IS MONSTER by Katie Hale
After the Sickness has killed off her parents, and the bombs have fallen on the last safe cities, Monster emerges from the Arctic vault which has kept her alive. Inspired by Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein, My Name Is Monster is a novel about power, about isolation, and about female relationships.
GET IN TROUBLE by Kelly Link
Fantastic, fantastical and utterly incomparable, Get in Trouble rummages in the cupboards of our psyches and pulls out fierce truths about everything from the essence of ghosts to the nature of love. And hurricanes, astronauts, evil twins, bootleggers, Ouija boards, iguanas, The Wizard of Oz, superheroes, the pyramids . . .

30/10/2025

We’re thrilled to share the news that Helena Bonham Carter is the audiobook narrator for ’s All of Us Atoms, published today in audiobook.

Heart-rending and intimate, All of Us Atoms unpicks the fabric of fact and experience to stitch a new tapestry of personhood, urging us to revel in our mutable, messy, multitudinous selves.

‘To read Holly’s writing is to live in it’ Helena Bonham Carter


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Fiercely independent

Since 1973 we’ve worked to unearth and amplify the most vital, exciting voices we can find, wherever they come from, and we’ve published all kinds of books – thoughtful, upsetting, gripping, beatific, vulgar, chaste, unrepentant, life-changing…

Along the way there have been landmarks of fiction – including Alasdair Gray’s masterpiece Lanark, and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the best-ever-selling Booker winner – and non-fiction too. We’ve published an American president and a Guantanamo detainee; we’ve campaigned for causes we believe in and fought court cases to get our authors heard. And twice we’ve won Publisher of the Year.

We’re fiercely independent, and we’re as committed to unorthodox and innovative publishing as ever.