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Serpent's Tail

Serpent's Tail is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Pete Ayrton. It is notable for its translated works, particularly European crime fiction, and is the British publisher of Elfriede Jelinek and Lionel Shriver. In January 2007 it was bought out by British publisher Profile Books. As characterised by Boyd Tonkin writing in The Independent on the imprint's 25th anniversary: It still issues a list of fiction and non-fiction that – from hard-boiled noir to gems in translation and left-field cultural reportage – often defines the meaning of 'cool'. The press publishes predominantly fiction, leaning towards edgy, left-of-centre writing. Its non-fiction output tends to focus on popular culture, film and music, and left-field politics. It publishes the current output of authors such as Nicholas Royle and Stella Duffy and the back catalogues of Derek Raymond and Kathy Acker. Prizes won by its authors include the Nobel Prize for Literature (Kenzabur? ?e, Elfriede Jelinek and Herta Müller), the Orange Prize for Fiction (Lionel Shriver for We Need To Talk About Kevin, in 2005) and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (Jonathan Trigell for Boy A, in 2004). In 2001 Serpent's Tail published the collected journalism of the late Elizabeth Young, having previously published her study of American blank generation fiction in 1992 (Shopping in Space). The imprint is known for publishing debuts - notables include Colm Toibin's The South, Michel Houellebecq's Whatever and David Peace's Nineteen Seventy-Four.


Books list of the same editor





Key Emotion Indicator
6/10





Small Lives

Pierre Michon - Publisher : Serpent's Tail

Publisher presentation: Pierre Michon’s first novel, won the Prix France Culture. Michon explains that he wrote it to save my own skin. I felt in my body that my life was turning around. This book born in an aura of inexpressible joy and catharsis rescued me more effectively than my aborted analysis. Le Monde calls it his chef d’oeuvre. A bolt of lightening. In Small Lives, Michon paints...
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Pour tous les jours

Winter

To my boss

Not easy to read

Classic modern

Less than 10$

At least one month









Key Emotion Indicator
6/10





Whatever

Michel Houellebecq - Publisher : Serpent's Tail

The protagonist (Harel), known only as Our Hero during the entirety of the story, lives a solitary life, and has not had sex for over two years. Within most of the book and film versions of Whatever, Our Hero draws on recollections of Schopenhauer and Kant to lambast the commodification of human contact, punctuating his inner monologue with bouts of nausea and onanism. He is wracked by the...
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In the metro, train, bus

Autumn

To my sister or brother

fairly easy to read

Classic modern

Less than 10$

A few days









Key Emotion Indicator
7/10





The book of disquiet

Fernando Pessoa - Publisher : Serpent's Tail

From Publishers Weekly: when Pessoa died in 1935, a few years short of 50, he left behind a trunk of mostly unpublished writing in a variety of languages his Lisbon publishers and variously translators are still sifting them. This perpetually unclassifiable and unfinished book of self-reflective fragments was first published in Portuguese in 1982, and it is arguably Pessoa's masterpiece. Pessoa...
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Before sleep

Autumn

To my friends

Not easy to read

Classic modern

Less than 10$

At least one month









Key Emotion Indicator
7/10





We are all completely besides ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler - Publisher : Serpent's Tail

Publisher's presentation: meet the Cooke family. Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke. As a child, she never stopped talking as a young woman, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective cover. Something happened, something so awful she has buried it in the recesses of her mind. Now her adored older brother is a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for domestic...
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For the week-ends

Winter

To my sister or brother

Easy to read

New

Between 10 and 20$

A few days






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