Scarlett Thomas

Monkeys with Typewriters

How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of Stories

An accessible creative writing manual that instructs not only on how to write, but how to read, from the bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y

Exploring great plots from Plato to The Matrix, from Tolstoy to Toy Story, Scarlett Thomas’s new book is for writers and readers who want to unlock any narrative and create their own. Filled with creative exercises, structures, and charts, Thomas’ manual breaks down the fiction writing process and demonstrates that everyone has material to write about, whether they believe it or not. Have you ever had your heart broken, or broken someone else’s heart? Have you ever won an argument but later realized you were wrong? Have you ever tripped in public or spilled wine on someone else’s carpet? Monkeys with Typewriters is an ode to the secret power of stories, and a guide to cracking those powers open.

As a bestselling author, Thomas may appear as a naturally gifted writer. However, for Thomas, fiction unlocked itself only once she recognized the importance of an author’s individual experience and one’s willingness to ask questions, not simply provide solutions. She deems the communication of one’s humanity as the key to making a piece relatable, and Thomas does nothing less in her own work. With startling and original insights into how we construct stories, Monkeys with Typewriters is a creative writing book like no other. It will show you how to not only write, but also to a finer degree, how to read.

The Seed Collectors

A Novel

A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world's most daring and brilliant writers.

Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander's role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can't stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love.

As Henry James said of George Eliot's Middlemarch, The Seed Collectors is a "treasurehouse of detail" revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human.