Spring Fever

Posted in Neem Tree Blog on March 17, 2020

We are hunkering down in central London and had been venturing out to a few (small) meetings, but as of tomorrow, this will be stopping completely for a while. It’s certainly a very surreal time. We’ve been amazed at the prescient TED talk that Bill Gates gave in 2015 Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We’re not ready | TED Talk. As we all do our best to follow directions to minimize the spread of the virus, particularly to vulnerable family and friends, we would ask everyone to remember that not having access to food, shelter and healthcare is the norm for the vast, and growing, number of refugees worldwide. Not in any way at all to minimize the scale of the Coronavirus’s impact in our own communities and its potential devastating effect on our elderly and medically vulnerable population, as of 2019, there were over 70 million refugees worldwide and undoubtedly, should the virus run rampant through a refugee camp, the results would be truly catastrophic.

As we see small and large businesses suffer and the negative trajectory on all stock markets, our thoughts go out particularly to those who rely on daily cash wages to make ends meet. Even without being affected directly with the virus, there will be many lives in all our communities that will need a helping hand. We wonder how long it will take for our lives to normalize and whether this is a true watershed moment which will truly impact how we deal with each other in the future.

We have two books launching into this Spring fever in the UK and Europe – Modesty: A Fashion Paradox by @hafsalodi on March 19th and Children of War by Ahmet Yorulmaz translated by @PaulaDarwish_en, on March 26th. We hope to reschedule the events that have needed to be cancelled and recognize publicity and marketing will undoubtedly be affected by the current situation.

We’ve received a starred review for Modesty by the American Library Association! We are unable to link to the review till early April, but can say that “Starred Reviews –The Booklist star indicates an outstanding title of a particular genre. All starred reviews are approved by the appropriate editor.” We’ve also had a great review from Publisher’s Weekly! “Journalist Lodi debuts with a nuanced and insightful study of the “modest fashion movement” in the Muslim world and beyond.” And so far, all five star reviews on Goodreads.

Children of War is the first translation into English of the book by Ahmet Yorulmaz. It is one of very few books written about the Greek / Turkish population exchange resulting from the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The book’s authenticity lies in the fact that the author drew inspiration from three diaries left by a refugee who had undergone this journey. We are looking forward to the #RandomThingsTours blog tour for the book starting on March 26th organized by the amazing @AnneCater! We will be doing a US blog tour for the book with @HFVBT and the lovely Amy!

We look forward to talking about our Autumn list later but wonder if publishing (and other) calendars will need to be pushed out into 2021?

Wishing everyone a very safe and healthy few months ahead.