Virago News

To mark the publication of Margaret Atwood’s new novel, The Testaments and to celebrate forty years of publishing with Virago – her novel Surfacing was one of the first Virago Modern Classics in 1979 – Virago are publishing on August 22 2019, four of her novels as Collector’s Editions. In paperback at £9.99 in stunning new designs with flaps and foil, these four books: Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin are some of her greatest novels.

When a dead body is found in the Thames, caught in the chains of HMS Belfast, it begins a search for a missing woman and confirms a sense that in London a person can become invisible once outside their community – and that assumes they even have a community. A policeman, a documentary film-maker and an Irish nurse named Chrissie all respond to the death of the unknown woman in their own ways. London is a place of random meetings, shifting relationships – and some, like Chrissie intersect with many. The film-maker and the policeman meanwhile have safe homes with wives – or do they? An immigrant family speaks their own language only privately; they have managed to integrate – or have they? The wonderful Linda Grant weaves a tale around ideas of home; how London can be a place of exile or expulsion, how home can be a physical place or an idea. How all our lives intersect and how coincidence or the randomness of birth place can decide how we live and with whom.

Our book of the month this June is The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister – the inspiration for the HBO/BBC series: Gentleman Jack.