Picador's upcoming winter list includes these major hardcover releases:
The Yid by Paul Goldberg
The Yid by Paul Goldberg ($26, 9781250079039) comes out February 2, 2016. James Meader, executive director of publicity at Picador and also the book's editor, calls it "Inglorious Basterds crossed with Ocean's Eleven by way of the Coen Brothers."
It's February 1953 in Moscow, and elderly actor Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, once a member of the banned State Jewish Theater, is about to become a victim of Stalin's final pogrom. Levinson, a military veteran, manages to escape the three intruders who come to his apartment in the middle of the night. He assembles a disparate group: a former Red Army comrade turned surgeon, an African-American engineer, and an enigmatic woman, with one impossible goal--to save Russia's remaining Jews by assassinating Stalin. The Yid mixes lofty intellectual concepts with violence and humor, creating an alluring piece of tragicomic historical fiction.
The Yid is Paul Goldberg's debut novel; it came to Meader's attention through an indie bookseller connection. Meader commented: "The Yid does something we always look for in fiction but rarely find: it takes something we think we know and twists it a few degrees."
Born in Moscow in 1959, Goldberg emigrated to the United States as a 14-year-old. He is the editor of the Cancer Letter, which explores the business and politics of cancer every week. He has written two books about the Soviet human rights movement and co-authored a book about the American healthcare system called How We Do Harm.
100 Million Years of Food by Stephen Le
100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today by Stephen Le ($26, 9781250050410) is another major Picador release, coming February 2, 2016. 100 Million Years of Food explores the history of human diets, our evolution, modern eating habits and how all this information can be used to make the best food choices for our health.
Biological anthropologist (and current biology professor at the University of Ottawa) Stephen Le decided to investigate human diets when he noticed the discrepancy between his grandmother and mother's lifespans. His Vietnamese grandmother died at age 92; his Vietnamese-Canadian mother at 66. Le wondered if diseases prevalent in the First World, like heart disease and the cancer that killed his mother, could be explained by the foods we eat. He traveled to Vietnam, Kenya and India, among other places, to see how local diets and adaptations correspond to health.
Woven into his deep reporting and global explorations, Le presents concrete steps, based on his scientific findings, to achieve better health. Le expands on the Michael Pollan concept of eating foods only your grandmother would recognize. Anna deVries, the book's editor, said that the book should reach different readers, interested in "health, history, sociological studies, like the sweet spot [achieved by] Jared Diamond." That sweet spot is not coincidental: Le studied under Diamond at UCLA, who provides a glowing blurb for the book.
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing ($26, 9781250039576) will be published on March 1, 2016. One of the first authors to be published in Picador's revived original program, Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking was an immediate hit with reviewers and booksellers, launching with the front cover of the New York Times Book Review. Laing's editor Morrison said, "Olivia's work is absolutely brilliant and this new book is deeply moving, fascinating and multilayered."
An expertly crafted work of reportage, memoir and biography told through the lives of iconic artists, Laing seeks answers to the questions of: What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people? Moving fluidly between works and lives--from Edward Hopper's Nighthawks to Andy Warhol's Time Capsules, and from Henry Darger's hoarding to the depredations of the AIDS crisis--Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone, illuminating not only the causes of loneliness but also how it might be resisted and redeemed.
City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence ($26, 9781250067630) is the first of Picador's major titles coming next year, appearing on January 5, 2016. What Katherinee Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers did for the slums of Mumbai, India, City of Thorns does for a massive refugee camp in Kenya, near the border with Somalia.
Situated in the middle of Kenya's northern desert, the Dadaab refugee camp was founded in 1991 as a temporary camp for 30,000 people. Almost 25 years later, it is now home to 500,000-plus civilians and is Kenya's third most populous city, albeit it a seemingly temporary one. Rawlence spent four years in this desperate makeshift city, chronicling the stories of nine residents.
Rawlence is a British writer and former researcher for Human Rights Watch. He studied under Barack Obama at the University of Chicago, received a Soros Foundation scholarship and speaks Swahili. With the refugee crisis in Europe saturating the news media, City of Thorns is sure to draw major attention, and Rawlence will be touring in January under the auspices of Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Foundation and the U.S. State Department.
The Golden Condom: And Other Essays on Love Lost and Found by Jeanne Safer, Ph.D.
There is no subject more terrible, complicated or thrilling than love. Despite its universality, love remains a great mystery. Enter psychotherapist Jeanne Safer and her provocative and compelling collection of essays, The Golden Condom: And Other Essays on Love Lost and Found ($26, 9781250055750, April 5, 2016). In The Golden Condom, Safer interweaves her own experiences with those of her patients to explore the frustration, humiliation, sadness and happiness that accompanies love. Keenly sensitive and vulnerable, Safer follows in the tradition of Stephen Grosz's The Examined Life while maintaining her distinctive identity as a fearless, relatable and trustworthy guide. Readers will need to delve in to discover the reason for the title.
Safer, PhD, a psychotherapist in New York City, is the author of a number of books on taboo topics and has been on the Daily Show and Good Morning America as well as many NPR broadcasts. She was most recently a contributor to Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed (Picador, 2015).
Shelter by Jung Yun
Shelter by Jung Yun ($26, 9781250075611) promises to be a big release for Picador when it comes out March 1, 2016. The novel's editor, Elizabeth Bruce, noted that 100 people at Macmillan, including CEO John Sargent, have read the book. "Everyone has a different takeaway, some call it The House of Sand and Fog with Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) pacing. It leaves you hanging until the last chapter." Darin Keesler, Picador marketing director, agreed: "Shelter will appeal to people who like crime fiction as much as literary fiction."
In the book, professor Kyung Cho is a second-generation Korean-American with a mountain of debt and an underwater mortgage. He and his wife, Gillian, daughter of an Irish police chief, face a financial crisis. Meanwhile, in an affluent area across town, Kyung's parents, Jin and Mae, enjoy the wealthy lifestyle Kyung desires for his own family. Kyung's familial and financial problems collide when a violent act leaves Jin and Mae unable to live on their own. He takes them in, and in the process learns what it means to be a good husband, son and father.
Shelter weaves a bloody mystery with domestic drama into a layered portrait of race, class, money, marriage and more. Author Jung Yun explores what parents owe their children and vice versa. Yun was born in South Korea and raised in North Dakota. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, The Best of Tin House: Stories edited by Dorothy Allison and the Massachusetts Review. This is her first novel.