Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent British book publisher based in Deptford, London, specialising in literary fiction and long-form essays in both translation and English-language originals.[1] It focuses on ambitious, imaginative, and innovative writing by little-known and neglected authors.[2] Fitzcarraldo Editions currently publishes twenty-two titles a year.[3] Four of Fitzcarraldo's authors have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature: Svetlana Alexievich (2015), Olga Tokarczuk (2018), Annie Ernaux (2022) and Jon Fosse (2023).
Fitzcarraldo Editions was founded in 2014 when Jacques Testard bought the English-language rights to Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich for £3,500 at the Frankfurt Book Fair.[4] Alexievich later won the Nobel Prize, netting a "six-figure" sum for the publisher. The name comes from the 1982 Werner Herzog film Fitzcarraldo.
The books are designed by Ray O’Meara, using a custom serif typeface called Fitzcarraldo.[5][4] The books are known for their minimalist design, with fiction titles deploying plain covers in International Klein Blue with white text and non-fiction using the reverse: white covers with text in International Klein Blue.[6] Poetry features the same blue as a border and black text against a white cover.
Fitzcarraldo Editions publishes the work of Svetlana Alexievich, Alejandro Zambra, Sheila Heti, Mathias Énard, Annie Ernaux,[7] Joshua Cohen, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Olga Tokarczuk, Jon Fosse, Fernanda Melchor, Ian Penman, Joanna Pocock, Jeremy Cooper, and Paul B. Preciado, among other authors.[4][8]
Along with New Directions Publishing and Giramando Publishing, Fitzcarraldo Editions hosts the Novel Prize, a biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers.[9] Fitzcarraldo Editions also hosts the annual Essay Prize, in conjuction with Mahler & LeWitt Studios.[10]
The company's logo shows a bell with the letters F and Z, and relates to the film Fitzcarraldo; it has been described as "a nod to the challenges and commitment necessary to run a successful independent press" with "a play on early printers marks, with the initials F and Z, recalling the symbols of the earliest printed books".[11]
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