Where books break new ground
At Jonathan Cape our publishing has been setting trends for a century. Our carefully curated list, respected and admired across the globe, ranges from commercial to literary fiction, pioneering graphic novels to award-winning poetry, and rich non-fiction spanning memoir, nature writing and ground-breaking ideas books. But regardless of form or genre, excellence, and a rebellious and courageous spirit, is at the heart of all we publish.
Our diverse and international family of authors reflects our belief that great storytelling can come from anywhere. We are home to some of the world’s finest writers and thinkers, as well as the best young talent of a generation. Many of our books are prize-winners, and some are classics in the making. Because looking to the future is how we built the list we’re so proud of today.
Where to start reading Julian Barnes One of the most successful British writers of the last four decades, here's our guide on where to begin with his vast and varied body of work.
Our recent highlights
David Szalay (Author)
Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London…
Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman – as his only companion. When a clandestine relationship begins between them, his life spirals out of control.
As the years pass, István moves from the army to the circles of London’s elite. His competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth win him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
Julian Barnes (Author)
*The final book from the Booker Prize-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author*
Departure(s) is a work of fiction – but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
'An elegant, thoughtful final book’ THE TIMES
‘His “last book” … proves one of his best’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Metafictional, moving, unmistakably Barnes' OBSERVER
Departure(s) is the story of a man called Stephen and a woman called Jean, who fall in love when they are young and again when they are old. It is the story of an elderly Jack Russell called Jimmy, enviably oblivious to his own mortality.
It is also the story of how the body fails us, whether through age, illness, accident or intent. And it is the story of how experiences fade into anecdotes, and then into memory. Does it matter if what we remember really happened? Or does it just matter that it mattered enough to be remembered?
It begins at the end of life – but it doesn’t end there. Ultimately, it’s about the only things that ever really mattered: how we find happiness in this life, and when it is time to say goodbye.
'One of our finest writers… Departure(s) can only polish his reputation’ DAILY EXPRESS
'He has given his career a triumphant ending’ FINANCIAL TIMES
Lizzy Stewart (Author)
'Satisfyingly detailed and juicy... an utter treat' Amy Liptrot
'Friendship, love and a gorgeous old house. A beautiful story beautifully told. I loved inhabiting The Wreck' Jessica Stanley
Two couples pursue their dream of communal living in the English countryside – and then it all comes tumbling down
Charlotte and Francesca were best friends at university in the mid-1970s. But tensions coursed beneath their natural affection, deepening when Fran got together with Charlotte’s friend Adrian, and the two women drifted apart.
When Fran contacts Charlotte out of the blue with an unusual proposal – an invitation to live with her and Adrian in the rambling house they’ve bought in the countryside – Charlotte impulsively persuades her partner, Bill, to accept this tantalising promise of a new kind of community.
At first their new life feels utopian; life and space are shared joyfully. But it doesn’t take long for old tensions to rise to the surface, shattering their illusions and showing each of them in a new light.
The Wreck is a glorious genre-defying illustrated novel about the messy tangle of love, envy and desire that underpins our most precious relationships, and the difficult paths we must take to discover our true selves.
'I fell hopelessly in love with The Wreck... A beautiful, funny, clever, insightful book' Lisa Owens
'A one-of-a-kind novel. I adored every page of it' Ana Kinsella
'A tender and wise portrait of love and friendship' Chloë Ashby
Michael Symmons Roberts (Author)
An inviting and poignant new collection exploring our increasingly turbulent relationship with nature, from award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts
'I love Michael Symmons Roberts' poetry' Jeanette Winterson
Dog Star is a book of linked poems rooted in encounters with real, imagined or mythical birds, trees, fish, flowers, bacteria, chimeras – ancient connections reshaped by technological and political change and critically endangered by species and habitat loss.
In Roberts’ previous work, his poems are attentive to glimpses of grace and presence, but always embodied and grounded. In this new book, that attention is sharper and more urgent than ever, at a time when the essential spiritual relationship between humanity and other forms of life is broken or lost. In a line from his collection Drysalter – ‘there is no way to the soul but through the body’ – he sets out the bearings for these new poems as attempts to tap into what D.H. Lawrence called ‘heaven’s wolfish, wandering electricity.’
Some encounters in Dog Star are head-on, face-to-face, some are more slant, distant, missed connections. There’s an elegiac sequence for the poet’s mother with each step measured in animals, an extended riff on the world as an aquarium and our lives seen through water – creatures dead and living, met in the flesh or mediated via film or stories. This is a profound, remarkable book by one of our major poets.
'The clearest and purest voice currently sounding in British poetry' Carol Ann Duffy
'An outstanding writer' Sunday Times
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