William Boyd announces title of new Bond book
at The London Book Fair
William Boyd, whose James Bond continuation novel is set to be one of this year’s publishing highlights, has today announced that his book will be called Solo.
The announcement came on the opening day of The London Book Fair, where
Boyd is Author of the Day.
He explained his choice of title:
‘Sometimes less is more. For me as a novelist the simple beauty of Solo
as the title of the next James Bond novel is that this short four-letter word
is particularly and strikingly apt for the novel I have written. In my
novel, events conspire to make Bond go off on a self-appointed mission of his
own, unannounced and without any authorization - and he’s fully prepared to
take the consequences of his audacity.
‘The journey Bond goes on takes in three continents – with the main
focus honing in on Africa. It’s what happens to Bond in Africa that
generates his urge to “go solo” and take matters into his own hands in the USA.
‘Thus far and no further, at this stage…’
He continues: ‘Titles are very important to me and as soon as I wrote
down Solo on a sheet of paper I saw its potential. Not only did it
fit the theme of the novel perfectly, it’s also a great punchy word, instantly
and internationally comprehensible, graphically alluring and, as an extra
bonus, it’s strangely Bondian in the sense that we might be subliminally aware
of the “00” of “007” lurking just behind those juxtaposed O’s of SOLO…’
Very little else has been revealed about the book at
this stage, other than that it will feature a veteran secret agent, with Bond
aged 45. It will be published on 26 September in the UK by Fleming’s original
publisher, Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage Publishing, part of The Random
House Group, in hardback, ebook and audio editions. HarperCollins will publish the
book in Canada and the U.S. on 8 October.
The 60th anniversary of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino
Royale, was on 13 April.
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