Saraband to publish the latest novel by multi-award-winning author A.L. Kennedy

Saraband is set to publish the latest novel by A.L. Kennedy on 9th January 2025. A work that cleverly deconstructs and reveals the impact of ongoing abuses of patriarchal power by those in government, in the police, and in the home, the novel was acquired by Sara Hunt, who has bought World English language rights from Antony Harwood at Antony Harwood Ltd Literary Agency.

Alive in the Merciful Country is a dark, fierce and often funny political commentary on a sinking nation, riven by crimes, haunted by unrevenged deaths. It’s also a meditation on survival, comedy and – above all else – love.

Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present.

With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her.

This is a twisty, heart-racing page-turner and viscerally rendered portrayal of abuse of power by the state, by the police and by the villains much closer to home.

Sara Hunt, Publisher at Saraband, says, “I could not be more thrilled to be publishing this stunning new work by a writer I’ve admired for so long and with such a stellar reputation. It’s vintage Kennedy, creative with language and form, and dealing with trauma, politics and society, yet studded with humour and lightened by hope. I can’t wait for readers to discover it.”

Antony Harwood says, “This is the perfect partnership: an outstandingly gifted writer and a brilliant publisher, both committed to fiction that is vitally contemporary.”

A.L. Kennedy added, “I am delighted to be working with the team at Saraband and to be deepening and developing a creative relationship.”

About the author

A.L. Kennedy was born in Dundee and now divides her time between Scotland and the East Midlands. She has won a variety of UK and international book awards, including a Lannan Award, the Costa Prize, the Heinrich Heine Preis, the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rees Prize. She has twice been included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. She has written ten novels, one of which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, six short story collections, three books of non-fiction and three books for children. She also performs occasionally in one-person shows and as a stand-up comic.

ISBN: 9781916812284 | Pub date: 9th January 2025 | Price and format: £18.99, hardback

Praise for A.L. Kennedy:

Winner of the Costa Book Award for Day; Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Serious Sweet ‘Kennedy is a singular, superlative author.’ Scotland on Sunday

‘Kennedy does bleak the way the Russians do epic; unremittingly, awesomely and undershot with redeeming humour’ Gillian Bowditch, Sunday Times

‘Kennedy is a superb writer and the canniness of her observation keeps you reading’ Sunday Times ‘Kennedy’s exquisite blending of the limits of pain and courage recall Primo Levi.’ Catherine Taylor, Financial Times

‘In equal measures, funny, sad and addictive.’ Stylist