Simon Petherick of Beautiful Books has bought
World English rights from Isobel Dixon to new agency client Duncan
McLaren's 'inquisitive, inventive' portrait of Evelyn Waugh, EVELYN! RHAPSODY FOR AN OBSESSIVE LOVE. Beautiful Books will publish in September 2011.
In
EVELYN! RHAPSODY OF AN OBSESSIVE LOVE, Duncan McLaren, the acclaimed
biographer of Enid Blyton, turns his attention to Evelyn Waugh, charting
a very personal course through Waugh's life, up until the writing and
publication of his final novel, Unconditional Surrender.
Adopting
the same disruptive and inquisitive approach as his previous works,
McLaren manages to produce an entirely new portrait of Evelyn Waugh to
those painted by more traditional recent biographies. Beginning with his
own personal obsession with Decline and Fall, McLaren embarks on a real
journey with his partner Kate to many of the key places in Waugh's
life, discovering along the way new insights into the triangular
relationship between Waugh, his wife Evelyn Gardner and the man she left
him for, John Heygate.
Both sympathetic and inimitably curious,
McLaren manages to bring one of our greatest writers to life in a
completely unorthodox, but very literary, manner.
Duncan McLaren's Saga blog, Visiting
Mabel is also shortlisted for the The 2011 Orwell Blog Prize.
"I
instantly loved the inquisitive nature of this biography. Evelyn Waugh
has always been one of my favourite authors, and with this book Duncan
illuminates aspects of Waugh's life hitherto ignored by other
biographers. By placing his own experiences next to those of Waugh, this
is a very inventive, and absolutely compelling, look at the life of one
of Britain's greatest writers." -- Simon Petherick, MD of Beautiful
Books
"[McLaren] shows how funny Waugh's writing is by adopting
and using many of his phrases, often in surprising ways. He is funny,
and that's a large part of the book's pleasure: not just rehashing all
those old novels (which we do in academia), but discovering new things
about them and trying to explain them to others." -- John Howard Wilson,
Secretary of the Evelyn Waugh Society
Duncan McLaren is the
author of LOOKING FOR ENID, a biography of Enid Blyton, and has written
extensively on art mainly for the Independent on Sunday and for art
magazines. He lives in Tayside.
Praise for LOOKING FOR ENID:
"Illuminating and entertaining." -- The Independent
"Cheerful
and inventive - packed with pastiche, imaginary encounters and literary
criticism. Imagine Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with lashings of
ginger beer instead of hallucinogenics." -- The Times
"Hurrah
for Little Noddy! Hurrah for Enid Blyton! And Hurrah for Duncan
McLaren's horribly hilarious, hideously brilliant quest to discover what
made Enid tick. I laughed so hard that I spat out the vodka - I mean
ginger beer - I was sipping, drenching my dog." - Val Hennessy, Daily Mail
