Canongate Acquires Whyte’s Consolations

Canongate have acquired David Whyte’s Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and the Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words which will be published in hardback on 7 November 2019. The Canongate edition will include an introduction by Maria Popova.

Canongate CEO, Jamie Byng, acquired World rights excluding US and including audio, from Many Rivers Press.

In Consolations David Whyte unpacks aspects of being human that many of us spend our lives trying vainly to avoid - loss, heartbreak, vulnerability, fear - boldly reinterpreting them, fully embracing their complexity, never shying away from paradox in his relentless search for truth.

Each chapter in this life-affirming book is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling overwhelmed and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness something that accompanies the first stage of revelation.

Byng says: ‘Consolations invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.’

‘Keep this book by your bedside forever. I know I will’ Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

‘Consolations, it bears repeating, is an absolutely magnificent read - the kind that reorients your world and remains a compass for a lifetime’ Maria Popova, ‘Brain Pickings’

Internationally acclaimed poet David Whyte holds a degree in Marine Zoology, honorary degrees from Neumann University in Pennsylvania and Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, and is an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. He is the author of eight volumes of poetry and four books of prose, as well as a collection of audio recordings. He lives in the Pacific North West.