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Union Books acquires 'remarkable' A-Z

29.05.12 | Charlotte Williams

Union Books has won rights at a five-way auction in Off the Map: An A-Z of Remarkable Places by geographer Alastair Bonnett.

Digital publisher and senior commissioning editor Robin Harvie acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from James MacDonald Lockhart. The title will be published in 2014.

The book is described as being “more than a book about places. It is psycho-geography, it is history, it is a book about geography and the imagination. Think Kathleen Jamie meets Edgelands and the strangest atlas you’ve ever encountered.” Places included in the book are Eyl, the pirate capital of Somalia; New Moore, an island which only emerged in the Bay of Bengal after a cyclone in 1970; and Krasnoyarsk-26, a town in Russia dedicated to the production of plutonium.

Bonnett is professor of social geography at Newcastle University, and was editor of the avant-garde, psychogeographical magazine, Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration between 1994-2000. 

Editorial director Rosalind Porter said: “Urban geography is rarely romantic, but this compendium of the unexpected and the in-between reminded me that the world is still hugely mysterious. It’s a delight to welcome Alastair to the Union list via Robin, who fought off the competitors and brilliantly acquired the book at auction.” 

• Alastair Bonnett
• Charlotte Williams
• Charlotte Williams 'remarkable' A-Z
• Rights deal
• Rosalind Poter
• union books