Gabriel Krauze moves to Fig Tree from 4th Estate for second novel
Fig Tree will publish Agony in the Garden, the second novel by the Booker Prize-nominated author Gabriel Krauze. Helen Garnons-Williams, publishing director at Fig Tree, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Nicola Chang at David Higham Associates, moving Krauze from 4th Estate. Hardback publication is scheduled for August 2027.
The publisher described the book as a “searingly beautiful, eye-opening and confronting” autobiographical novel inspired by Krauze’s experiences of the war in Ukraine. It follows the narrator through two rotations with the Ukrainian Hospitallers – a volunteer battalion of soldier-medics.
The synopsis continues: “Overshadowed by his own violent past in the gang culture of north-west London, the narrator discovers unexpected parallels between these soldiers and the young men with whom he grew up.
“Amidst the horror and devastation of war and violence, Krauze searches for vestiges of the divine and, with a ferocious clarity, reckons with the unfiltered, freeing nihilism of the young soldiers who welcome him into their inner circle. Agony in the Garden is a stunningly-written, gut-punch of a book: an essential exploration of masculinity, a chronicle of humanity under duress and a requiem for a lost generation.”
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Garnons-Williams said: “We are thrilled to be publishing Gabriel Krauze’s breathtaking new novel: an All Quiet on the Western Front for the 21st century. We often talk blithely about books changing the way we see the world. This book does that, irrevocably. But it also offers a fierce and timely reminder of the necessity of art in helping us to hold on to our humanity, to survive and to bear witness.”
Krauze said: “Agony in the Garden is my ode to brotherhood on the brink. I’m so pleased the book has found an ideal home at Figtree and Penguin Random House with Helen Garnons-Williams, and that I’m represented by the most formidable Nicola Chang.”
Chang said: “Agony in the Garden is an extraordinary book of surpassing beauty and brutality, which will put readers in mind of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night and the work of George Orwell and Svetlana Alexievich. I am so pleased that Helen Garnons-Williams and Fig Tree will be publishing this important testimonial novel by one of our boldest and most original literary voices.”
