Edward Carey’s LITTLE, published in the UK by Gallic Books and in the US and Canada by Riverhead, has been longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. The Walter Scott Prize celebrates “quality, innovation and longevity of writing in the English language, and is open to books first published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth”. The Rathbones Folio Prize is awarded to “works of literature in which the subjects being explored achieve their most perfect and thrilling expression”, and the Ondaatje Prize is given to a book of the highest literary merit “which best evokes the spirit of a place”.

Foreign rights to LITTLE meanwhile have been sold in 11 territories so far, including the Czech Republic (Argo), France (Cherche-Midi), Germany (Beck), Holland (Ambo Anthos), Hungary (Europa), Italy (La Nave di Teseo), Japan (Sogensha), Korea (Arcade Publishing), Poland (Proszynski), Russia (Eksmo) and Turkey (Ithaki).

LITTLE is the wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud.

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and at the wax museum, heads are what they do…

Praise for LITTLE:

‘One of the most original historical novels of the year. By turns macabre, funny, touching and oddly life-affirming, LITTLE is a remarkable achievement.’ — Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times

‘An exquisitely disturbing treasure of a novel. Sensual, unassumingly poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking, cruel, joyous: a triumph and one of the most intoxicating novels I've read.’ — Sarah Schmidt

‘A brilliant love child of the kingdom of letters.’ — Immédiatement

‘Delightful, eccentric, heartfelt, surprising.’ — Eleanor Catton

‘Carey, an artist and playwright who has worked at Madame Tussauds in London, has turned his experience into a startlingly original novel. He finds and treasures the ironies and macabre eccentricities of Tussaud’s world. The pages are also enriched by his beautiful and haunting illustrations of body parts and anatomical models.’ – The Times

‘Edward Carey’s Gothic tale is a wry meditation on a state between life and death… A rattling narrative is fleshed out with visceral detail and illustrations by the author… It is both clever and intriguing.’ — Daily Mail

‘Don’t miss this eccentric charmer.’ — Margaret Atwood

'LITTLE is that rare thing – a unique novel with a unique and fully-realised voice, rich in deadpan wit and surgically precise observation. By turns tragic, bizarre and deeply moving LITTLE introduces readers to a heroine like no other and a book that will truly last. It is an absolute delight.' — A.L. Kennedy

‘LITTLE is an amazing achievement. Devote yourself to its first few pages and you will be sentenced to finishing it. I was thrilled not just by the story and the human grotesquerie of it, but by the narrative gallop and the prose, so often quietly startling in the application of a solitary mot juste. A compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself.’ — Gregory Maguire author of WICKED

About the Author

Novelist, artist, playwright. His debut OBSERVATORY MANSIONS (with his illustrations) was sold in 15 languages and was described by John Fowles as ‘proving the potential brilliance of the novel form’. Born in England, he teaches at the University of Austin, Texas.

Follow Edward Carey on Twitter

Visit Edward Carey's website