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Notting Hill Editions (NHE) will publish a new list of pocket-sized collectible paperbacks with essays by Julian Barnes and Tom McCarthy. The series, which will be launched in 2025, features shorter-length essays in a small format, and has been designed by Tom Etherington.
"Quite often, when I ask writers if they would like to write an essay for NHE, they have an idea that is considerably shorter than the 35,000-40,000 words that our unique, linen-bound hardback books tend to be," Porter said. "So it seemed an obvious next step for us to begin publishing ’shorts’."
The first two books in the series are Changing My Mind by Barnes – which will be published on 18th March 2025 – and The Threshold and the Ledger by McCarthy, which will be published on 2nd September 2025.
"Barnes’s book is an engaging, and dare I say also very funny, exploration about what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books; about memories, age and time," publisher Rosalind Porter explained. "In his own words: ’We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater truthfulness to our dealings with the world and other people. It puts an end to vacillation, uncertainty, weak-mindedness. It seems to make us stronger and more mature. Well, we would think that, wouldn’t we?’."
The publisher added: "In The Threshold and the Ledger, McCarthy unpacks a single poem by Ingeborg Bachmann and takes off on a line of flight that carries the reader through the work of Franz Kafka, David Lynch, Anne Carson, Sappho and Shakespeare. Appearing on the eve of Bachmann’s centenary year, McCarthy’s book celebrates the brilliance of a writer who has come to be regarded as one of the 20th-century’s most important German-language authors."
Porter acquired rights to Changing My Mind from United Agents and rights to The Threshold and the Ledger from Jonathan Pegg Literary Agency.