We’re delighted to report that multi-award-winning and critically acclaimed author Lavie Tidhar has signed a new three-book deal with Head of Zeus!
Announced at the end of last week, publisher Nicolas Cheetham acquired the UK and Commonwealth rights for three new stand-alone novels. The first, BY FORCE ALONE, is expected to publish in April 2020. Lavie’s biggest and most ambitious book yet, it offers a new spin on the Arthurian legend and grail quest. An early version of the synopsis has already appeared online, and here it is…
Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of… whatever. You can look it up on Wikipedia. You can see it in those pretty Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
But there was never a painting that showed the true Britain, the clogged sewer Rome abandoned just as soon as it could. A Britain where petty warlords murdered each other in the mud, and all the while the Angles and Saxons and – worst of all – the Jutes, were coming over here and taking our lands and taking our jobs and taking our women.
And what of the only man who could stop them… What of Arthur, King of the Britons? An over-promoted gangster, in thrall to that eldritch parasite, Merlin.
Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer.
The Grail Quest? Have you no idea about the aliens and the radioactive blight?
Ach.
Well, you’d better read this then.
Lavie Tidhar said, ‘I’m delighted to be joining Head of Zeus. Writing BY FORCE ALONE was a tremendous amount of fun and I can’t wait to share it!’
‘There was only one way I was ever going to read another King Arthur novel, and that was if Lavie Tidhar wrote it,’ said Cheetham. ‘Iconoclastic, provocative, hugely entertaining, utterly original, this is a book with bite — as you’d expect from the award-winning author of OSAMA, THE VIOLENT CENTURY and CENTRAL STATION. Lavie Tidhar is a key addition to our list of international speculative fiction.’
John Berlyne said, ‘Nic has been assembling and refining an impressive and exciting internationally focused SF list over at Head of Zeus. We’re very pleased indeed that he’s now adding Lavie’s distinctive voice to it.’
Lavie is the winner of a World Fantasy Award, a John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction and the British Fantasy Society Award.
The author’s latest novel, UNHOLY LAND, was recently published by Tachyon Publications — who also publish his award-winning CENTRAL STATION and THE VIOLENT CENTURY.
