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.

01/09/2026

VERY exciting new proofs just landed 🏓 for our Spring lead debut – Ping Pong Kids by Renny Gong. And we couldn’t wait to celebrate – with some spicy snacks and a proof drop to the entirety of Canongate, and of course, board room pingpong!

In PING PONG KIDS you’ll meet America. Twelve years old and thrust from the heights of American ping pong into an intensive Chinese academy (where he is quickly and pretty brutally humbled), he must reconcile his fierce ambition with the question of whether he actually wants this future.

‘This book is like if the tennis students from Infinite Jest were Chinese 12-year-olds who drank b**r. . . . Ping Pong Kids is the greatest, funniest, most honest book I’ve read about the nature of prodigy. Renny Gong is quite clearly a prodigy himself, and this batty, brilliant debut novel will have you doing every possible kind of crying’ Tony Tulathimutte

Start the rally.
PING PONG KIDS is publishing 8 April.

Instagram! Announcing a beautiful pair of events - Damian Barr will be live with Alice Strang at 1pm and Jack Shoulder a...
28/08/2026

Instagram! Announcing a beautiful pair of events - Damian Barr will be live with Alice Strang at 1pm and Jack Shoulder at 6pm next Friday on Damian’s page. Tune in to hear them discuss The Two Roberts live!

Happy Pub Day to these wonderful authors! Erin Somers Damian Barr Paperback editions of THE TEN YEAR AFFAIR and THE TWO ...
27/08/2026

Happy Pub Day to these wonderful authors! Erin Somers Damian Barr
Paperback editions of THE TEN YEAR AFFAIR and THE TWO ROBERTS are Out Now!

THE TEN YEAR AFFAIR by Erin Somers
A witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life and the roads not taken, that ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true?

‘I devoured it. It was completely exhilarating!’ CATHERINE NEWMAN
‘Sociologically acute and slyly entertaining’ New York Times

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, shortlisted for the Nero Book Award & The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award

‘Crackles with creative rebellion’ DOUGLAS STUART
‘Immersive, intelligent, immensely sensual’ ELIF SHAFAK

24/08/2026

Exciting news! We are thrilled to announce that Bonnie Wright is our reader for the audiobook of the new Raising Hare children’s edition, bringing Chloe Dalton’s bestselling true tale of an extraordinary friendship to a new generation of nature lovers.

As well as Bonnie’s beautiful reading of the adapted children’s edition, the audiobook features a postscript from Michael Morpurgo and a special reader Q&A with Chloe.

All formats are out on 10th September and you can pre-order at the link in bio.

Now that all the others have run out of air, it’s my turn to do a little story-making . . . So I’ll spin my own thread.T...
21/08/2026

Now that all the others have run out of air, it’s my turn to do a little story-making . . . So I’ll spin my own thread.

To celebrate Christopher Nolan’s adaption of The Odyssey taking over cinemas
we’re hosting a giveaway of Margaret Atwood’s feminist retelling of the same story The Penelopiad ✨

This stunning twentieth anniversary edition includes a new foreword by the author and an afterword by Philip Pullman

We are giving away five of these special books!
For a chance to win be sure to:
⭐️follow us Canongate
⭐️like this post
⭐️leave a comment tagging a friend & sharing your favourite woman in ancient Greek mythology 🇬🇷

Competition ends Monday 24th August! ⌛
Only ellible for readers based in the UK*

Penelope . . . immortalised in legend and Greek myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband’s return from the Trojan war.

Now, in Atwood’s wise and witty retelling of the myth, Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story – a tale of lust, greed and murder.

14/08/2026

One rain-lashed night, Eliza, a fading folk music legend, strides out across the North York Moors with her life savings in a rucksack. She has a plan. But when she wakes the next morning, severely hungover, she can't remember what it was. Or where the gold is now.

Husband Seth is holding the family farm together. He's been at it for twenty years: looking after their three children, his ailing mother and the family's herd of goats, while absorbing whatever Eliza throws at him. But everbody's got a breaking point.

Throw in a long-lost sister, a best friend going off the rails and a feud with the village's dodgiest family - and Seth and Eliza have their hands full. It's possible the lost gold might save them. That is, if their own buried secrets don't sink them first.

The Ballad of Seth and Eliza is a big-hearted family saga. Adrian Edmondson's novel shows us how the greatest love songs are never about easy love. And nor, it turns out, is the greatest life. 

Coming April 2027 - pre order via the links in bio! 

14/08/2026

One rain-lashed night, Eliza, a fading folk music legend, strides out across the North York Moors with her life savings in a rucksack. She has a plan. But when she wakes the next morning, severely hungover, she can't remember what it was. Or where the gold is now.

Husband Seth is holding the family farm together. He's been at it for twenty years: looking after their three children, his ailing mother and the family's herd of goats, while absorbing whatever Eliza throws at him. But everbody's got a breaking point.

Throw in a long-lost sister, a best friend going off the rails and a feud with the village's dodgiest family - and Seth and Eliza have their hands full. It's possible the lost gold might save them. That is, if their own buried secrets don't sink them first.

The Ballad of Seth and Eliza is a big-hearted family saga. Adrian Edmondson's novel shows us how the greatest love songs are never about easy love. And nor, it turns out, is the greatest life. 

Coming April 2027 - pre order via the link in bio! 

This week, Charlotte McConaghy joined us from Australia for a very special Afternoon Tea to celebrate WILD DARK SHORE 🎉 ...
12/08/2026

This week, Charlotte McConaghy joined us from Australia for a very special Afternoon Tea to celebrate WILD DARK SHORE 🎉 We had so much fun at the OXO Tower Restaurant, Bar & Brasserie listening to Charlotte talk about the book (plus, her plans for the next one! 👀), about what inspired her and the journey to writing it.

We were so grateful to be joined by a few of you too on the day. Thank you to all of you who have championed the book!

10/08/2026

It’s just one month today until the glorious children’s edition of Chloe Dalton’s prize-winning true story of a wondrous friendship is published.

The new children’s edition includes beautiful new illustrations by Denise Nestor, specially adapted text for younger readers, a postscript by Michael Morpurgo and hare fact files.

Perfect for 8-12 year olds, we can’t wait for a new generation of nature-lovers to discover Raising Hare. You can pre-order from the link in bio.

We are pleased to announce that we will publish Willie Nelson’s new book THE LAST LEAF: Reflections on Late-Life Creativ...
28/07/2026

We are pleased to announce that we will publish Willie Nelson’s new book THE LAST LEAF: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity and My Longest Love Affair, on 5 November, 2026.

In THE LAST LEAF, Nelson shares his well-earned wisdom about reaching an astonishing creative flourishing, and not coincidentally, an even deeper union with the love of his life, Annie. Willie Nelson is 93, and he has not been slowing down. In the past 12 years, he has recorded twenty-one new studio albums, written more than fifty new songs and seven books, and headlined over eight hundred live shows. What has been going on? He’s not going to get mawkish about it, but he does have some thoughts. With his trademark downhome wit, he opens up wide and brings us in touch with the same inexhaustible, vital stream of energy he has learned how to stay tapped into.

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