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The language and way of thinking of Venetians sets them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and the tides rather than to the land. For Ackroyd Venice followed naturally from his Thames biography. With his gift for encapsulating the grand sweep of history, Ackroyd provides a comprehensive history of Europe's most remarkable city: its humble origins, its importance as a centre for trade, the sieges, scandals and its inspiration to artists.
‘It's the combustible mix of scholarly rigour and instinct that brings his inimitable words to life.’ The Times
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Knaus Germany
Olga Morozova Russia
BB Art Czech Republic
Knaus Germany
Material: finished copies (403pp).
The cook, the trickster, the priest, the wronged woman, the lawyer, the hero, the villain. Tales of love, sex, infidelity, villainy, drunkenness, murder.
A motley group of travellers meet at a London inn on their way to Canterbury, where they agree to take part in a storytelling competition. As they make their way on the road, they drink, laugh, flirt, argue, interrupt and try to outdo each other with their tales.
Funny, moving, outrageous and life-affirming, the twenty-four stories here blend comedy and tragedy, heroic adventure, high romance and salacious humour. Peter Ackroyd’s fresh, modern retelling infuses The Canterbury Tales with new and vigorous life.
Peter Ackroyd also provides an introduction, detailing some of the historical background to Chaucer and the Tales, and why he has been inspired to translate them for new generations of readers.
'The welcome appearance of Peter Ackroyd's new prose version of The Canterbury Tales is compulsive, bold and rare and will surely become a vital crib for generations of students to come.' Robert McCrum, Observer
'The pivotal nature of Chaucer's masterpiece is certainly not lost on Ackroyd, who treats the text with sensitivity and humour. The work exists as groups of manuscripts put together later by various editors, and it is this aspect of the book that makes Ackroyd's take on the work even more intriguing, as he has focused his attention before on London poets, bards and authors. Ackroyd's accessible writing style and obvious passion for the subject is evident in this enthusiastic interpretation.' Times Online
Peter Ackroyd has already finished translating the Mort D'Arthur by Thomas Malory to be published by Penguin Classics.
Penguin Classics UK (WEL)
Achuzat Bayit Israel
Material: finished copies.
At Oxford University, the long-haired poet, 'Mad Shelley', and a serious-minded Swiss student spark each other's interest in the new philosophy of science. Perhaps there is no God. If so, where is the divine spark, the soul? Victor Frankenstein begins his anatomy experiments in a local barn. The coroner's office provides corpses, often putrifying. Victor moves to a deserted pottery factory in Limehouse, and makes contact with the Doomsday Men. H e pays better than any hospital but even so perfect specimens are hard to come by. Until that Thames-side dawn when Victor hears the splashing of oars and sees in the half-light the corpse of a handsome young man.
‘Terrifying and fascinating in equal measure. Mary Shelley's book, with its hotchpotch structure and multiple viewpoints, is often compared to the monster within it. Ackroyd's, too, resembles his protagonist's creation, but this is a beast of a different nature: an intelligent, creepily beautiful and haunted thing. Definitely not one you would want to encounter alone on a dark night.’ The Times
‘Ackroyd's depiction of the fetid air and teeming streets of the city is meticulously researched and recreated. But this is also Ackroyd at his most playful, skewing facts - both literary and historical - to create his own eerie and plausible version of events.’ Daily Mail
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Corpus Books Russia
Zysk Poland
Saida de Emergencia Portugal
Film option sold to Vespa Pictures
Material: finished copies (296 pp).
Ackroyd follows this great river from its source to the sea. Its history, the flora and fauna, its geology, smells and colours, its literature, laws and landscape, its magic and myths, its architecture, trade and weather. We learn about the fish; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; sewers, weirs and embankments. Ackroyd has a genius for digging out surprising details, and for writing about them in magisterial prose.
‘Ackroyd's gift is to write history in the idiom of a poet. As soon as you open this account of the Thames, you will want to immerse yourself in it.’ Telegraph
'As always with Ackroyd, it’s not just the subject that sets this book apart but also the compelling new perspectives he brings.’ The Times
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Knaus Germany
Neri Pozza Italy
Olga Morozova Russia
Material: finished copies (490pp).
NOMINATED FOR THE PRIX MEDICIS 2008
'Archaeology is not a science,' Obermann says. 'It is an art.' Obermann is very good at the art of archaeology. Obsessive and intuitive, he is a romantic visionary. Ackroyd brings Troy electrifyingly to life in this dazzling work of the imagination which, like the ancient epics so loved by Obermann, is in part accurate and in part fantastic. It tells stories about the deaths of heroes; stories that blur the boundaries between truth and fiction, stories of mistakes, human folly and the temptation to cover up.
‘However you read The Fall of Troy - as a love story and mystery told in Homeric style, or as a deeper meditation on the relationship between reality and imagination - Ackroyd the novelist re-emerges triumphantly.’ The Times
‘It is Peter Ackroyd's remarkable achievement, in this complex and fascinating novel, to take a figure who was already a legend in his own lifetime, and recreate him as a creature of myth. Provoking, unsettling, ingenious - and a delight to read.’ Barry Unsworth
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan Talese USA
Meulenhoff NL
Diigisi Greece
Editions Philippe Rey France
Yapi Kredi Turkey
Olga Morozova Russia
Record Brazil
Teorema Portugal
Material: finished copies (215 pp).
Ackroyd richly conjures up the texture of Shakespeare’s life, and at the same time imparts an amazing amount of vivid, interesting material about place, period and background.
‘Ackroyd at the height of his powers. A tour de force.’ Sunday Times
‘Superb. The book Peter Ackroyd was born to write.’ Daily Mail
‘A leading biographer at the top of his game.’ FT
Chatto UK
Nan A Talese/Doubleday USA
Meulenhoff NL
Knaus Germany
Neri Pozza Italy
Philippe Rey France
Edhasa Spain
Partvonal Hungary
Teorema Portugal
CoLibri Russia
Hakusui-Sha Japan
Mikri Arktos Greece
Material: finished copies (546 pp).
A gripping story of art imitating art, The Lambs of London brilliantly recreates an urban world of scholars and entrepreneurs, actors and theatre managers, a world of betrayal and deceit.
‘A delicious entertainment.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Touching and ingenious.’ TLS
Chatto UK
Editions Philippe Rey France
Meulenhoff NL
Knaus Germany
Neri Pozza Italy
Material: finished copies (216 pp).
Visionary nuns, religious terrorists, rival popes, and aspiring kings all feature in The Clerkenwell Tales, a medieval thriller par excellence… (213 pp)
‘Tremendous.’ Independent on Sunday
‘A truly extraordinary feat of historical imagination.’ Sunday Telegraph
Chatto UK
Nan Talese USA
Philippe Rey France
Edhasa Spain
Meulenhoff NL
Knaus Germany
Zysk Poland
Livanis Greece
Teorema Portugal
Alkim Turkey
Folio Ukraine
‘An explosion. Crammed, digressive, learned, brilliant.’ Telegraph
‘Covers not only literature but art, architecture, music and almost everything else that has passed through the minds of the English. Just one damn interesting thing after another.’ Sunday Times
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan A Talese /Doubleday USA
BB ART Czech Republic
Tygodnik Powszechny Poland
Material: finished copies (516 pp).
No one should or needs to read any other book on London. For Ackroyd London is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Anecdotal, brilliant and wonderfully entertaining. LONDON is animated by Ackroyd’s concern for the close relationship between past and present as well as how its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its inhabitants. (822 pp)
‘Ackroyd's superbly crafted, learned, intelligent London is the best monument the capital could have. It is absolutely wonderful.’ Telegraph
‘Fizzes with vitality and originality.’ Sunday Times
‘You will not find a better, more visionary book.’ Observer
Chatto UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Knaus Germany
Frassinelli Italy
Stock France
Edhasa Spain
Olga Morozova & Innostranaya Literatura Magazine Russia
BB Art Czech Republic
Yilin Press China (simplified)
Zysk Poland
A series of ten 50,000 word biographies.
'This series is understated and elegantly constructed, and has that reassuring quality of tone you find in an author who could have written a book five times as long on the same subject, but who has chosen not to.' Guardian
Edgar Allan Poe's life (1809-1849) was mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, original, dark, dazzling, satirical, inventive - in short, an ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Concise, dramatic and immensely readable, this is an essential addition to Ackroyd's canon of brilliant biographies.
‘Wonderfully rewarding. Poe's brilliant, erratic, abbreviated career stands to gain rather than lose from the form of brief life patented by Ackroyd. It operates by lightning strikes, atmospheric colouring, impressionistic techniques of concision and suggestion.’ Guardian
‘Poe's difficult nature and the economics of the US literary scene in the first half of the 19th century combine in Ackroyd's hands to create a trap from which every escape leads to unhappiness. The result is unsettling but hugely powerful.’ The Times
‘Makes the reader want to re-read Poe, and indeed to read more of Ackroyd.’ Scotsman
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Atena Finland
Editions Philippe Rey France
Edhasa Spain
Karaat NL
YKY Turkey
Sareni Ducan Croatia
Patakis Greece
Material: finished copies (170 pp).
‘Chaucer is a natural subject for Ackroyd. He was a man in the thick of late 14th-century society: a diplomat, customs officer, court official, member of parliament, justice of the peace. He went abroad, and it was on trips to Genoa and Florence that he may have come across the works of Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch that so influenced his own. Ackroyd is never better.’ Times
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Philippe Rey France
Material: finished copies (175 pp).
‘Gets closer to the heart of Turner than a book ten times as long. Everything seems pertinent, vivid and miraculously revealed. Ackroyd has a sure instinct for what matters.' Mail on Sunday
Chatto & Windus UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Material: finished copies (161 pp).
‘Ackroyd knows how to tell a story. His Isaac Newton is a strange man indeed: emotionally wounded, difficult, wilful, hypersensitive narcissist, but equipped with this extraordinarily original and elastic imagination that allowed him to venture intellectually where no man had gone before. You really get a sense of his intense solitude. And the maths is explained with considerable skill and the lightest of touches.‘ Spectator
Chatto UK
Nan A Talese Books USA
Academia Czech
Material: finished copies (163 pp).