Sour Grapes

By Dan Rhodes

'Dan Rhodes is a true original' – Hilary Mantel
'I read this novel right through the day I got my hands on it, laughing like a banshee.' - David Sexton, Sunday Times

When the sleepy English village of Green Bottom hosts its first literary festival, the good, the bad and the ugly of the book world descend upon its leafy lanes

But the villagers are not prepared for the peculiar habits, petty rivalries and unspeakable desires of the authors. And they are certainly not equipped to deal with Wilberforce Selfram, the ghoul-faced, ageing enfant terriblewho wreaks havoc wherever he goes

Sour Grapes is a hilarious satire on the literary world which takes no prisoners as it skewers authors, agents, publishers and reviewers alike

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lightning Books
• Release date: Oct 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781785632938

Dan Rhodes

Dan Rhodes is the author of several novels and story collections including Anthropology: And a Hundred Other Stories (2000), Timoleon Vieta Come Home (2003) and When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow (2014). He was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, has won a number of literary prizes, including the E.M. Forster Award, and was named one of the Evening Standard’s ‘People Who Make London Swing’ despite never actually living there.

Reviews for Sour Grapes

[lizzysiddal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dan Rhodes might be spitting feathers at the publishing industry, but he’s funny with it …

[davidroche_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dan Rhodes has been around for a while as an author and has been hailed for his talent over the years as much as for writing on subjects that sail close to the wind. His latest book, Sour Grapes (Lightning Books), features literary and publishing types, and authors in general, who attend a book festival devised to put a small town on the map. Fans of Dan Rhodes may not be surprised that many of the characters featured do not come off particularly well, and some are less disguised than others. There is a festival organiser called Florence Peters and an author whose raison d’etre is to use the longest, most complicated words possible – his name is Wilberforce Selfram. Dan Rhodes appears himself in the book writing Sour Grapes and while it is often funny and the targets probably deserving, the whole conceit seems somewhat stretched in this format.