I wish I could take more credit for having discovered A Century of November. I'd like to say I personally plucked it out of obscurity, polished it, and presented it to the world. But the truth is that I can take hardly any credit at all. Walter's book came to us as one among many submissions for an annual literary fiction prize. Each year we get around 150 submissions, and they're sent anonymously through two rounds of judging. The year we received Walter's book, I heard from several judges along the way about a small book about the first world war, variously described to me as "beautiful," "elegiac," "stunning," "gorgeous." But all I could do was sit back and wait to see what book the final judges picked. The decision was unanimous.


Chris Hebert

Acquiring Editor for Music, Fiction, Classics, Archaeology, Early Modern History and German Studies.