Client details

Patrick Neate

Patrick Neate

Agent
Simon Trewin
Assistant: Ariella Feiner
About

Patrick Neate is a respected novelist, critic, scriptwriter and poet and runs BookSlam. His work has been published in most major UK newspapers and magazines, widely anthologised and broadcast on radio and television.  Patrick Neate was born in South London, and now divides his time between London and Southern Africa.

For more information about Patrick Neate please see his website at www.patrickneate.com

Current Publication:

JERUSALEM, Fig Tree, (2009):

‘He looks like a Brit, this guy. Full of good intentions and bad ideas.’ Straddling two continents and two centuries, Patrick Neate’s Jerusalem is a sweeping and hilarious epic of English misadventures abroad and at home. It features a self-serving MP lost and alone in an African dictatorship; a young, ultra-hip entrepreneur looking for something (or someone) new to exploit and an English veteran of a colonial war trying to save England from itself. With a host of other brilliant and brilliantly drawn characters, this is the funniest and most moving story of Englishness as it never was, isn’t now and, hopefully, will never be.

Reviews:

"A classic of its kind. . . JERUSALEM further cements his already rock-solid reputation as one of our finest young novelists.  Funny, beautifully constructed and cathartically worldly-wise." William Boyd, Sunday Herald

"Bitingly, laugh-out-loud satirical, politically sharp, absolutely on the money in portraying social class niches, JERUSALEM is, quite simply, a must read." Daily Mail

"Patrick Neate's colourful satricial writing has always stood at some uber-cool crossroads between pop culture, social theory, racial politics and good old-fashioned belief in the power of storytelling. JERUSALEM. . . is his most accomplished. . . It's a tricky thing to keep so many balls spinning but Neate finally makes it look easy." Book the Week, Metro

"Think David Mitchell's CLOUD ATLAST. . .  compelling." The London Paper

Gallery
Fiction
Publication DetailsNotes
CITY OF TINY LIGHTS
2006
Penguin

Meet Tommy Akhtar, Ugandan Asian cricket fan, devoted son, and not very successful private investigator with offices over his brother Gundappa’s mini-cab firm in deepest West London. He's just woken up from his hangover (combing the parting on his toungue) when his next case comes through the door. It looks like just another investigation when hooker Melody comes into his office asking him to find her co-worker, Natasha, last seen meeting new client at a bar in Shepherd’s Market. But as the search for Natasha intensifies, Tommy’s world becomes increasingly sinister. He is drawn into a murder investigation, the criminal underworld, the world of fundamentalist religion and maybe even terrorist activities. Neate brilliantly explores the oddball underbelly and weird cultural mix of London today and questions just what it really means to be British now.....

WHERE YOU'RE AT
2004
Bloomsbury

Pinballing around the major cities of the world, from where it all began in the projects of Brooklyn and the Bronx to the excessive madness of Tokyo, from the random violence of Johannesburg, to the shanty towns of Rio, Whitbread Award-winning writer Patrick Neate explores the way how, through hip hop, the potent symbolism of black America has been acquired, used and subsumed by cultures on every continent to create a uniquely different form of globalism. A stunning musical journey and cultural odyssey, this is the story of how hip hop conquered the globe and nobody noticed.

THE LONDON PIGEON WARS
2003
Viking

A gang of London twentysomethings are facing up to the disappointments of adulthood. The hat maker can't sell her hats, the dot.com whizz kid's gone bust, the TV personality's continually stopped in the street, mistaken for someone else. As for the poet? It's all too embarrassing. Meanwhile, London's pigeons are at war. They're not sure what they're fighting about. It could be politics or personality or territory or religion. Whatever. But it's definitely got something to do with the appearance of a bloke called Murray...THE LONDON PIGEON WARS is a hilarious satire-cum-thriller about ambition and failure, materialism and morality, mirrors as windows - and pigeons with a taste for blood.

TWELVE BAR BLUES
2001
Viking

Spanning three continents and two centuries Twelve Bar Blues is an epic tale of jazz and juju, fate, family and friendship which finally unfolds in the Louisiana bayou... At its heart is Lick Holden, a young jazz musician, in 1900 New Orleans. The story of Lick's search for his step-sister echoes throughout the other stories in the book - of Sylvia, the English hooker and Jim her young companion; of the mysterious seashell head-dress; of Musa, the itinerant witchdoctor and of Tongo, the frustrated African chief.

MUSUNGU JIM AND THE GREAT CHIEF TULOKO
2000
Penguin

Jim Tulloch is an English teacher in Zambawi, a small republic in sub-Saharan Africa, who gets caught up in a military coup. In a series of comically convoluted twists and turns, Jim, now Musungu Jim, somehow finds himself - literally - spearheading the revolution.

Agent
Georgina Lewis
+44 (0) 20 3214 0871
About
Patrick Neate is represented by Georgina Lewis for Dramatic Rights
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