Jonathan Galassi, the 66-year-old president of American book giants Farrar, Straus and Giroux, will publish his debut novel in June.
Muse explores the rivalry between two great and respected publishers, and the female poet with whom they are both obsessed.
Paul Dukach is heir apparent at Purcell & Stern, one of the last independent publishing houses in New York. Under the tutelage of his boss, the flamboyant Homer Stern, Paul learns how to survive in the tough world of the book trade, be it handling an agent over lunch, fighting your corner at the Frankfurt Book Fair, or dealing with the tender egos of the authors.
In his dreams, Paul covets the publishing rights to the work of poet Ida Perkins, she of the iconic poems and rather spicy private life. However, her long-time publisher is also her former lover, as well as being Purcell & Stern’s biggest rival. Then Paul finally meets Ida at her Venetian palazzo, with auspicious consequences.
“This is a love story,” the preface of Muse declares. “It’s about the good old days, when men were men and women were women and books were books, with glued or even sewn bindings, cloth or paper covers, with beautiful or not-so-beautiful jackets and a musty, dusty, wonderful smell . . . ”
Muse is published by Knopf and by Jonathan Cape in Ireland and the UK.
