The novel tells the story of two friends, Enero and El Negro, who take Tilo, the teenage son of Eusebio – their recently deceased friend – fishing to the Paraná River. While they drink and cook and talk and dance, they try to overcome the ghosts of their past and those of the present: their mood altered by wine and torpor. This intimate, peculiar moment connecting the lives of these three men also links them to the lives of the local inhabitants of this watery universe that runs by its own laws.

There are losses, premature deaths… But there is also the stubborn vitality of nature: a bush covered with ancient trees, animals, birds; the river bearing life in its entrails, the people born and raised in this landscape which they protect tooth and nail against intruders.

This story, which flows like water, talks about the love between friends, the love of a mother for her daughters, and the love of the islanders for their river and everything that lives in it.

Charco Press focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world. We aim to act as a cultural and linguistic bridge for you to be able to access a brand new world of fiction that has, until now, been missing from your reading list.

It is an exciting time to be discovering and reading Latin American literature given the vast and rich array of works coming out of this region, the diversity of voices. Charco Press is only able to represent a tiny amount – indeed, a small ‘puddle’- compared to the ocean of talent that exists out there. We actively seek out those authors that are exemplary, that produce works that are not only entertaining, but also engaging and thought provoking. And we are proud to be bringing them to you.

We also consider our translators to be a critical part of the equation. They are the conduits bringing our authors' voices to you, and it is their interpretation, their attention to the nuances, that makes the difference. We select contemporary translators, to give our authors a modern voice. Charco Press is doing things differently in this regard, stepping away from the mainstream, and bringing in emerging talent from the margins.

More speed, more light, more time.

But this is the fastest possible film, pushed as hard as it can be pushed; the lens wide open to catch every drop of brightness; the slow exposure shaking the image apart. Right up at the edge.

Go farther, closer.

Venice, 2000.

Richard is a postgraduate student living in the city to research its past. He’s supposed to be working in the archive, but he meets Merlo and Lars, two art students who are more interested in Venice’s present. He decides to pick up a camera and join them.

The world comes alive for Richard through photographs: for the first time, he feels connected to a place – and other people. He’s determined to continue, whatever the cost. Push Process is a novel about art, friendship and being European, illustrated with over fifty black-and-white photographs of Venice.

Ortac Press is an independent book publisher based in London. Ortac specialises in non-fiction writing on art, culture, music and social science. The press publishes a variety of novels too. We aim to publish books that are illuminating, captivating and relatable.

1951, Singapore. Ten-year-old Josephina kills her abuser.

This trauma becomes the defining moment in the lives of Josephina, her daughter Sithera, and her granddaughter Annie.

The effects cascade through generations as Annie sets out across the world to discover what happened to fracture family.

Set in Sri Lanka, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and London, AMMA is a novel about family, displacement, secrets, and how the past lives with us forever.

Written in sensuous, vivid prose, AMMA is a story of the rich history and unknown future of the Sri Lankan diaspora - and of one family desperately trying to find peace.

Weatherglass Books is a new independent press founded by Neil Griffiths (novelist and founder of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses) and Damian Lanigan (novelist and playwright). Weatherglass was founded on a shared love of Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower and a shared fear that it wouldn’t find a publisher today. Weatherglass Books wants to clear a space for the next The Blue Flower.

A few years ago my husband recommended me for a job in his company, and I thought it would be fun, and so a woman named Rosaleen would ring me for a chat. Rosaleen was a senior director in the firm, and these were scheduled chats, but I was always unprepared, running from a room, looking for a pen, or out in the rain, pushing the baby in the pram. Rosaleen had a terse and serious manner that unwound into listless expectation when my turn came to speak. I would say something and she would wait for me to say something better. Rosaleen savoured a pause. The line burned with a shared misgiving even as Rosaleen made me an astounding offer.

Old Romantics is a collection of witty and acutely observed stories from an astonishing new talent. Slippery, observant and flawed, Maggie Armstrong’s narrators navigate a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility.

Tramp Press was launched by Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff in 2014 to find, nurture and publish exceptional literary talent. Tramp is based in Ireland and publishes internationally. Our authors include Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Mona Eltahawy, Sara Baume, Mike McCormack, Sophie White, and Jade Sharma.

Tramp Press authors have won Irish Book Awards, the International DUBLIN Literary Award (formerly the IMPAC), the Goldsmiths Prize, the Rooney Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, a Lannan Fellowship, the Davy Byrnes Award, the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Kate O’Brien Award. They have been nominated and shortlisted for many more, including the Booker Prize, the Costa, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Michel Déon Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.

People who love books will always want excellent writing. We want to help them get their hands on it.

From the ‘strikingly smart and daringly feminist’ (Jenny Offill) author of Margaret the First and SPRAWL comes a prose collection like no other, where different styles of writing and different spaces of experience create a collage of the depths and strangeness of contemporary life. Danielle Dutton’s writing is as protean as it is beguiling. In the four eponymous sections of Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other, Dutton imagines new models for how literature might work in our fractured times. Out of these varied materials, she builds a haunting landscape of wildflowers, megadams, black holes, violence, fear, virtual reality, abiding strangeness, and indefinable beauty.

Founded in 2019 by Jess Chandler, Prototype is a publisher of fiction, poetry, anthologies and interdisciplinary projects. With an emphasis on producing unique and beautiful books, we are committed to championing the work of new voices in free-form contemporary literature. Prototype is committed to creating new possibilities in the publishing of fiction and poetry through a flexible, interdisciplinary approach. Each publication is unique in its form and presentation, and the aesthetic of each object is considered critical to its production. Through the discovery of high quality work across genres, Prototype strives to increase audiences for experimental writing, as the home for writers and artists whose work requires a creative vision not offered by mainstream literary publishers.

To be announced…

The publishing project of London-based artist and writer Rachel Cattle, JOAN is an independent publisher of contemporary interdisciplinary writing, supporting feminist, queer, and idiosyncratic voices, and innovative fictions.

Winner of the Ramon Llull Prize in Catalan literature.

A masterpiece about how to survive a heartbreak. Beloved is a book that explores the lightness in which the sweetest life suddenly turns upside down, a story through whose veins are running heartbreak, maturity and the loss of sexual fury.

Remei, the main character of Beloved, is a prestigious illustrator in her fifties who considers herself an attractive, happily married mother. Yet one evening, sitting in the back seat of the family car, she clearly predicts that her younger husband, a principal violinist in an orchestra, will fall in love with the second violinist, the woman sitting beside him, as they head to their home to rehearse. Neither Remei’s husband nor the young woman have realised this yet. But Remei has. This devastating certainty leads Remei, a determined woman who since childhood has had to fight to survive, to a harsh realization of what it is to grow old inside. She must suddenly accept the vulnerability of marital love, the addictive dependence of motherhood, and the expiration date on her artistic career.

We experience the progressive emotional and physiological transformation of a mature woman who fights against age, a woman that when she goes jogging, has a constant inner monologue in which she welcomes us into her intimate and confessable space. We go from laughter to the sharpness that lays bare the pathetic side of life, to the point of leaving us feeling like stone statues, facing a story that unfolds with coldness and determination when it comes to recreating the anguish generated by the few alternatives that the protagonist has left. Empar Moliner makes fiction out of the purest reality: the ease with which the most stable and consolidated life can be shaken. After all, even the greatest stability hangs by a very fragile and almost invisible thread.

Empar Moliner displays her literary talents in a moving and unforgettable story about friendship, the passage of time, forgiveness and the secret rawness—that’s never spoken of and always down-played—of menopause.

We are born with the ambition of spreading voices and topics silenced by what is dominant. We translate female authors who write in minority languages. Only women. Only minority languages. This is our choice. We know that we only win if we all win, that´s why we are proud to be fair trade publishers. And we are committed to supporting organisations in the UK that help women to live freely and with dignity. We are 3TimesRebel.

Winner of the Polityka Passport Prize 2020.

Queenless is the story of a stormy relationship: the narrator is a daughter who adores a mother she herself must mother from a very early age. Her mother is gorgeous and fascinating and wildly unpredictable, sometimes vanishing, sometimes drinking heavily, often angry with the daughter who tries to help and understand her. When she eventually dies of cancer, the narrator struggles to understand how to live without her.

In post-Soviet Poland, a young woman tries to fill the space left by her eccentric mother while struggling to fit in modern life. A trance-like narrative, a strong, witty, and trembling story about the desire to live.

Héloïse Press champions world-wide female talent. Héloïse’s careful selection of books gives voice to emerging and well-established female writers from home and abroad. With a focus on intimate, visceral and powerful narratives, Héloïse Press brings together women’s stories and literary sophistication.

To be announced…

An award-winning independent publisher of new voices and great books from across the world.

Founded in 2008, we’ve been a key player in the thriving UK independent publishing scene for over a decade, publishing books from 25 countries and 20 different languages. Traditionally a publisher of European novellas in translation, we now publish writing from all over the world and are expanding our list to publish literary fiction of all shapes and sizes. Our books are regularly listed for significant UK literary and translation prizes, including the International Booker Prize, and in 2023 we won the Dublin Literary Award with our book Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, translated from German by Jo Heinrich.

Winterberg’s Last Journey follows its two main characters on an eclectic, tragicomic train journey through Central Europe – ‘the beautiful landscape of battlefields, cemeteries and ruins’. When Czech nurse Jan Kraus is charged with the care of 99-year-old Wenzel Winterberg, a Sudetenland German expelled from his Bohemian homeland after the Second World War, he believes that their time together is limited. But a casual remark from Kraus one night – ‘it’s interesting; your name is Winterberg, and I came from Winterberg, from Vimperk in Bohemia, which used to be called Winterberg’ – sparks a new life in the old man, who becomes obsessed with uncovering the fate of his lost love, Lenka Morgenstern. Kraus is then dragged along by Winterberg on a winding train journey from Berlin to Sarajevo, all the while dealing with Winterberg’s regular ‘historical fits’. Their only guide is Winterberg’s Baedeker for Austria-Hungary from 1913 – the last edition ever issued.

Jantar is an independent publisher of European Literary Fiction and Poetry based in London and has been praised widely for its choice of texts, artwork, editorial rigour and use of very rare and sometimes unique fonts in all its books.

Founded in 2011 by Michael Tate and a group of his friends, Jantar’s guiding principle was to select, publish and make accessible previously inaccessible works of Central European Literary Fiction through translations into English… texts ‘trapped in amber’. This, to some, whimsical endeavour found further expression in the publication of Kytice, a bi-lingual version of the 19th century collection of poems written by the Czech folklorist and poet Karel Jaromír Erben. Though the original poems written in the Czech language will not be familiar to English-language readers, themes and rhythms featured in those poems are well-known to music lovers as they provided the inspiration for Antonín Dvořák’s tone poems The Water-sprite, The Golden Spinning-wheel, The Spectre’s Bride, The Noon-day Witch and The Wild Dove. First published in 2013, Kytice remains Jantar’s best-selling book, a fact that continues to delight and confound all connected with our company.

To be announced…

Founded in 2020 by Brekhna Aftab and Farhaana Arefin, Hajar Press is an independent and proudly political publishing house run by and for people of colour. Hajar was born out of our frustration with the publishing industry’s structural problems—institutional racism; commercial trend-following; Amazon’s domination; and the atomisation of readers and writers—as well as with the lack of internationalism and antiracist solidarity within many of our political movements. We aim to build a community for people of colour, who are too often excluded from both these worlds: mainstream publishing and many conversations on the left. By writing on our own terms, we want to honour our histories, imagine new horizons and strengthen our collective power.