Picador partners with Luath Press to take Poverty Safari to a broader audience

McGarvey’s extraordinarily powerful book has already sold over 20,000 copies in the UK and was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. It has garnered glowing responses from a host of famous fans, including Irvine Welsh, Ken Loach, Paul Mason, Nicola Sturgeon and J. K. Rowling, who said, ‘This is a savage, wise and witty tour-de-force . . . It is hard to think of a more timely, powerful or necessary book.’

Poverty Safari blends memoir, journalism and polemic to make the argument that both the left and the right hopelessly misunderstand the complexity of poverty as it is actually experienced. People from deprived communities all around Britain feel misunderstood and unheard; Darren McGarvey gives voice to their feelings and concerns, and the anger that is spilling over. McGarvey has recently appeared on Question Time, Start the Week and Russell Brand’s podcast, and this August he will take his highly acclaimed book to the stage in a ground-breaking Edinburgh Fringe show, Poverty Safari Live.

Kris Doyle, Senior Commissioning Editor at Picador, has negotiated a World Rights deal with Gavin MacDougall at Luath Press.

Doyle said, ‘Darren McGarvey is as intelligent, articulate, bold and powerful a writer as I’ve ever read, especially on the subjects of poverty and working-class experience, and when you add in that he’s razor-sharp, funny, inspiring, shocking and entertaining – well, all I can say is that his book blew me away. Luath Press and Darren have done an amazing job in reaching the readership they already have, but this book should be read by every citizen of this country who would like to better understand life as it is really lived in Britain today. The Picador team are looking forward to using our scale and global reach to get this book to the even larger audience it certainly deserves.’

MacDougall added, ‘We’re delighted to be working with Picador to reach a wider readership. From the moment Darren came to see me with an initial A4 outline of what Poverty Safari might be, through to the first ever standing ovation I’ve witnessed at Edinburgh International Book Festival – and I must have been to 300 or more events at EIBF – and on to the Sunday Times Top 10 and the Orwell Prize shortlisting, we’ve always been convinced that this book can and will make a real difference to people’s lives. Many books, movies and TV series could be described as ‘poverty safaris’ – Down and Out in Paris and London, Chavs, Hillbilly Elegy, The End of Eddy, I, Daniel Blake, Benefits Street and many more. What Darren does in Poverty Safari is analyse his own lived experience to challenge the ‘poverty industry’ and all of us to rethink our own ways of thinking. We don’t have the muscle to reach the readership this book deserves. Picador does and will.

Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass will be re-issued by Picador on Thursday 6 August in paperback (ISBN: 9781529006346) and ebook (ISBN: 9781529006353)