Canongate has landed James Crawford's The Edge of the Plain, a blend of history, travel writing and reportage tracing the evolution and cultural significance of land borders.
Simon Thorogood, editorial director, acquired world all language rights from Maggie Pearlstine Associates. US rights have been pre-empted by W W Norton.
In the book, Crawford argues that society's enduring obsession with borders has brought us to a crisis point: that people are entering the endgame of a process that began thousands of years ago when we first started dividing up the Earth. The book takes in the history of borders — from the earliest marker which denoted the edge of one land and the beginning of the next, to the walls going up around the world today. It is a story told in four parts, each exploring a different aspect of the lifecycle and experience of borders all around the world and throughout history — how they are created, how they can change and evolve, how they are crossed or breached, and, finally, how they are overcome or broken.