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.

Happy Publication Day!PHYSICS FOR CATS – NAMESAKE – RAISING HARE – WITH LOVE, GRIEF & FURY – .godden GREEN CRIME – A...
09/10/2025

Happy Publication Day!

PHYSICS FOR CATS –
NAMESAKE –
RAISING HARE –
WITH LOVE, GRIEF & FURY – .godden
GREEN CRIME –

All available at your favourite indie bookshop, (most available online, with the exception of the lovely winter Independent Bookshop Edition of Raising Hare, which you can get at all good independent bookshops!) Link in bio!

————

PHYSICS FOR CATS
What happens to a cat who goes through a wormhole?
Tom Gauld returns with a new batch of hilarious gags from his .com strip, which will be as important to every self-respecting scientist as a lab coat and oversized rubber gloves.

Winner of the Jhalak Prose Prize & The Guild of Food Writers Award, NAMESAKE offer a remarkable exploration of heritage, gender and the idea of home, and paint a vivid picture of what courage looks like amidst interminable conflict.
‘An essential read’ Guardian

A gorgeous independent bookshop exclusive edition launches for RAISING HARE: Winner of the Wainwright Prize and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, this instant Sunday Times bestseller is the magical true story of a woman and an injured hare who taught her how to live again.

WITH LOVE, GRIEF AND FURY is poetry full of love and hope for people and planet. Grief poems brimming with compassion, mourning what was lost whilst contemplating what might be found. And poems of fire and fury that kick some ass, tell the truth and inspire change.
‘A revelation’ Nikita Gill

In GREEN CRIME Dr Julia Shaw dissects the motivations and causes of environmental crime to ask how do the Earth’s killers think? What makes their crimes so deadly? And how can we stop them from stealing our future?
‘Deeply compelling’ Adam Rutherford

Happy Publication Day to and her latest poetry collection POYUMS ANNAW 🌊An incisive and fiercely honest collection from...
25/09/2025

Happy Publication Day to and her latest poetry collection POYUMS ANNAW 🌊

An incisive and fiercely honest collection from the Sunday Times bestselling author and performance poet sensation Len Pennie!

There isn’t a timescale for how you should heal
Your bad days are valid, your heartache is real
But so is the day that your smile will return
That fire within you continues to burn
You will overcome this and continue to thrive
You are here, you are loved, you are whole, you’re alive.

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. Incisive and fiercely honest, poyums annaw firmly underscores Len’s place as a defining voice in contemporary poetry.

We are DE-LIGHTED to announce that the following five books have been selected for Waterstones paperbacks of the year! C...
22/09/2025

We are DE-LIGHTED to announce that the following five books have been selected for Waterstones paperbacks of the year! Congratulations to:

ALL FOURS – Miranda July
THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE – Matt Haig
THE SECRET PAINTER – Joe Tucker
RAISING HARE – Chloe Dalton
THE HEART IN WINTER – Kevin Barry

Look out for all five on Waterstones' table this Christmas if you want to dive into some of the most engaging fiction & non-fiction out there!

https://www.waterstones.com/campaign/paperbacks-of-the-year-674285

is going on tour in the UK for her wonderful new novel, Heart The Lover! Tickets at the link in our bio!
22/09/2025

is going on tour in the UK for her wonderful new novel, Heart The Lover!

Tickets at the link in our bio!

Happy Publication Day!COULD SHOULD MIGHT DON'T – Nick FosterTHE HEALING POWER OF KOREAN LETTER WRITING – Juhee MunTHE MA...
11/09/2025

Happy Publication Day!

COULD SHOULD MIGHT DON'T – Nick Foster
THE HEALING POWER OF KOREAN LETTER WRITING – Juhee Mun
THE MANY LIVES OF JAMES LOVELOCK – Jonathan Watts
THE BRIDGE BETWEEN WORLDS & EMPIRE ANTARTICA – Gavin Francis
NEVERLAND – Vanessa Kisuule
EXIT WOUNDS – Peter Godwin

All seven of these little wonders are available now in your favourite local bookshop, and online, https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/out-today/

We are absolutely delighted to share the news that last night Chloe Dalton's RAISING HARE won the inaugrual Wainwright P...
11/09/2025

We are absolutely delighted to share the news that last night Chloe Dalton's RAISING HARE won the inaugrual Wainwright Prize Book of the Year Award (Alongside the Nature Writing Prize for 2025). Huge congratulations to Chloe!

Chair of the judges, Luke Sherlock said: ’Raising Hare is a warm and welcoming book that invites readers to discover the joy and magic of the natural world. As gripping and poignant as a classic novel, there is little doubt this will be read for years and decades to come‘

Have you read Raising Hare yet? You can get a copy now, link here: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/raising-hare-chloe-dalton/7670734

Happy Publication Day to THE TWO ROBERTS by Damian Barr, a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and cl...
04/09/2025

Happy Publication Day to THE TWO ROBERTS by Damian Barr, a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class.

“Crackles with creative rebellion” DOUGLAS STUART
“We need love stories like these. Utterly absorbing” JACKIE KAY
“immersive, intelligent, immensely sensual” ELIF SHAFAK
“A novel that brims over with generosity and warmth” OBSERVER

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

He will stay like this forever, Robert’s arm draped round him. They will be forever twenty.

Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he’s off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls – and never leave his side.

THE TWO ROBERTS is available in hardback and ebook now!

Today is World Letter Writing Day! Letters have been here all along, quietly influencing countless people in profound wa...
01/09/2025

Today is World Letter Writing Day!

Letters have been here all along, quietly influencing countless people in profound ways. They encourage, they bring happiness, while to some they even provide the will to keep on living.

Geulwoll is a Korean word for ‘letter’. It is also the name of a small, unassuming letter shop, located on the third floor of a shabby building in the bustling heart of Seoul. People visit from all over to write and send letters to loved ones – and to strangers.
———
Everyone likes letters. One of their charms is that we can’t see what’s inside right away: there’s an anticipation in unsealing the mysteries held within.

In The Healing Power of Korean Letter Writing, Juhee Mun reveals the lost art of the handwritten letter: how it can ground and centre us, improve and repair our relationships with others and foster a culture of contemplation, reflection and togetherness.

This book is not about rules or right answers for writing letters. It is about embracing the power of what happens when you choose to carve out the time to write them.

Canongate hit the red carpet for the film premiere of THE ROSES🍿🎬Inspired by the classic THE WAR OF THE ROSES by Warren ...
29/08/2025

Canongate hit the red carpet for the film premiere of THE ROSES🍿🎬

Inspired by the classic THE WAR OF THE ROSES by Warren Adler, we were so excited to be invited to this glamorous and star-studded event to celebrate! ⭐️

THE WAR OF THE ROSES is available online and in bookstores now!

JONATHAN AND BARBARA ROSE ARE THE PERFECT COUPLE
. . living the dream in their beautiful house, filled with their precious antiques, their darling children and their prized Ferrari. Surely, it’s all anyone could possibly want?
But when Jonathan experiences a sudden heart attack (or so he thinks), Barbara realises that she wants a new life, without him. There’s just one problem: they both want the house. For husband and wife, it’s not just a residence: it’s a passion, one that will provide the battlefield, complete with weapons and casualties, for the escalating war that follows.

In this vicious black comedy, the Roses will each do whatever they can to destroy their better half – no matter the cost to themselves . . .

August is Women in Translation Month!We’re lucky enough to publish some INCREDIBLE pieces of translated fiction and what...
22/08/2025

August is Women in Translation Month!

We’re lucky enough to publish some INCREDIBLE pieces of translated fiction and what better time to show them off to you all! 📚

IDOL, BURNING by Rin Usami
High-school student Akari has only one passion in her life: her oshi, her idol. His name is Masaki Ueno, best known as one-fifth of Japanese pop group Maza Maza. Akari’s dedication to her oshi consumes her days completely – until he disgraces himself and Akari’s world goes into a tailspin.

EUPHORIA by Elin Culhead
A woman’s life, erupting with brilliance and promise, is fissured by betrayal and the pressures of duty. What had once seemed a pastoral family idyll has become a trap, and she struggles between being the wife and mother she is bound to be and wanting to do and be so much more.

THE HEALING POWER OF KOREAN LETTER WRITING by Juhee Mun
Geulwoll is a Korean word for ‘letter’. It is also the name of a small, unassuming letter shop, located on the third floor of a shabby building in the bustling heart of Seoul. People visit from all over to write and send letters to loved ones – and to strangers.

THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE KNIFE by Gu Byeong-mo
She never presumed she herself would live out her natural life, so she wouldn’t mind leaving this world through an untimely death.
A whip-smart, taut and compelling novel about a 60-something female assassin navigating the vulnerabilities posed by her ageing body, and a meditation on loss and loneliness.

SWALLOWS by Natsuo Kirino
Twenty-nine-year-old Riki is sick of her dead-end job, of struggling to get by ever since she moved to Tokyo from the country. So when someone offers her the chance to become a surrogate in return for a life-changing amount of money, it’s hard to turn down. But how much of herself will she be forced to give away?

Today is World Humanitarian Day 🕊️ This day is dedicated to the incredible people who step up in times of crises to help...
19/08/2025

Today is World Humanitarian Day 🕊️

This day is dedicated to the incredible people who step up in times of crises to help others and to honour those who have died dedicating their lives to causes they believe in.
This year the humanitarian system is stretched to its limit; underfunded, overwhelmed and under attack.

To honour the work they do and the causes they fight for, we would like to highlight two books that reveal the critical nature of the humanitarian crisis today and promising ideas on how the world may change for the better 🌎

ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West offered freedom and justice for all. Over the past twenty years he reported on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more. He won awards for his journalism and his fiction. But now, watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he comes to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.

In TOGETHER, award-winning political thinker, author and poet Ece Temelkuran provides an inspiring manifesto for change by revealing fresh possibilities for the better world we might want to live in and gives us a new vocabulary for the political action that the twenty-first century demands.

Happy Publication Day!AN ALMANAC OF BIRDS - THE WAR OF THE ROSES - Warren AdlerOUT OF THE DARK - .caro SWALLOWS- Natali...
14/08/2025

Happy Publication Day!

AN ALMANAC OF BIRDS -
THE WAR OF THE ROSES - Warren Adler
OUT OF THE DARK - .caro
SWALLOWS- Natalio Kirino
BREADWINNERS-

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AN ALMANAC OF BIRDS
A gorgeous and inspiring book of cards: one hundred ‘divinations’ for daily living, partway between poem and koan yet neither, collaged from the texts and illustrations of 19th-century ornithological books

“Maria’s Divinations are her radically beautiful, wise and breathless prayers” NICK CAVE

THE WAR OF THE ROSES
In this viciously black comedy, the Roses will each do whatever they can to destroy their better half – no matter the cost to themselves . . .
Soon to be reimagined as a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch & Olivia Colman

“Black hearted and bristling because you’re trapped inside the self-justifying, increasingly mad minds of [Jonathan] and Barbara Rose” GILLIAN FLYNN, author of Gone Girl

OUT OF THE DARK
A young woman is missing, but has she run away – or been captured?
In this terrifying game of cat and mouse, Caplan must trace where love and control twist together, and question where power lies in any relationship. But the darkest skies hide the darkest secrets . . .

“Dark, unsettling, brutal, and tragic . . . A fine choice for fans of Ian Rankin and Val McDermid” BOOKLIST

SWALLOWS
Vibrating with the injustices of class and gender, tradition and power, Swallows is an acerbic, witty vision of contemporary Japan by Natsuo Kirino, acclaimed author of the smash hit Out

“Her fearless pen forces us to confront the ugliness, intensity and depth of our own desires, to the point that we cannot look away” MIEKO KAWAKAMI

BREADWINNERS
If we can share power more equally, we can improve not only our own wellbeing but also recognise how to dismantle social structures that are seemingly set in stone. The must-read book on how to address the power dynamics in your work, life and love by award-winning science journalist Melissa Hogenboom

“If I’d understood the weight of the invisible work I was doing as a breadwinner and young mother— if I’d had a book like this — I might have spoken up sooner, especially to myself” MARY PORTAS

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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.