ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My sincere thanks to Anna Webber at United Agents for being the first to read this manuscript and for believing it to be a book, to Kendall Storey at Catapult for her generosity and energy, to Lettice Franklin at W&N for her enthusiasm and care, and to all three for their support, reassurance, advice and ideas. I also need to thank William Kherbek for his dispassionate scrutiny (and for “fauxetry”), and Emily Berry for her counsel on nomenclature. Thanks too to Nicolette Polek, Lucy Ives, Megan Nolan, Luke Kennard, Kate Kilalea, Jonathan Lethem and Laird Hunt for their time, kindness and advocacy. My very great thanks to the staff at the National Library of Scotland Reading Rooms in Edinburgh, where the majority of this novel was written. A thoroughly inadequate expression of gratitude, finally, to my family and friends for their constant and benign presences.

About the Author

SAM RIVIERE is the author of three poetry books, 81 Austerities, Kim Kardashian’s Marriage, and After Fame, all published by Faber, and a book of experimental prose, Safe Mode. He teaches at Durham University and lives in Edinburgh, where he runs the micropublisher If a Leaf Falls Press.