A&U, Hachette to release new Shaun Tan books in 2018

Allen & Unwin and Hachette will be releasing new books by award-winning author Shaun Tan in 2018.

Allen & Unwin will publish Tales from the Inner City, a companion volume to Tan’s 2008 book Tales from Outer Suburbia, in October 2018.

Tales from the Inner City features 25 illustrated short stories, each exploring ‘unique relationships between humans and animals living together in urban environments’.

A&U publisher Jodie Webster describes it as ‘Shaun Tan at his best’. ‘The superb illustrations and haunting stories are wonderfully captivating, and also challenge us to think about our world a little differently,’ said Webster.

Hachette’s Lothian imprint will publish Tan’s new standalone picture book Cicada, about ‘a bug working in an office and all the people who don’t love him’, in Australia and New Zealand in June 2018. It will also be published by Hachette in the UK.

‘Cicada is a fable that no one else in the world could have conjured,’ said Hachette Australia co-managing director Justin Ractliffe. ‘A dream of escape, a commentary on corporate slavery, a multi-layered allegory—Shaun has taken the humble cicada and created mythic fairytale of magic, menace and wonder.’

Tan said the book’s premise is one ‘people immediately respond to—often with “I feel like that!”’

Category: Junior Local news Rights and acquisitions