In the centenary year of the Great War, Myrmidon’s lead literary fiction title for 2014 will be The Cartographer of No Man’s Land by American novelist, P.S. Duffy, and newly acquired through literary agents Abner Stein and the author’s US agent, Julie Barer.

The centerpiece of the work is the historic assault by Canadian troops on the infamous Vimy Ridge in 1917, but the narrative alternates between the horrors of the Western Front and the effects of war on a small maritime community in Nova Scotia. It tells of an artist and navigator who, despite his pacifist upbringing, joins up in the hope of finding his missing brother-in-law.

Recently published by Norton in the US and by Penguin/Random House in Canada, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land has already been received well by North American critics and a review by Frances Itani in last week’s Washington Post described it as ‘compelling’ and as ‘an addition to the literary canon of World War I of the very best kind’.

Myrmidon’s publishing director, Ed Handyside, states that the centenary year is ‘convenient but coincidental’:

‘We’d have published it anyway. It’s quite simply the best piece of debut fiction I’ve come across for some considerable time. The stark horrors of trench warfare are painted as vividly and authentically as in the novels of Sasoon and Remarque, but amidst and despite all the trauma that afflicts both the combatants and their dependents at home, there is a controlled but strong sense of nobility that I found most affecting.’

The author, P.S. Duffy, grew up in Baltimore but spent summers sailing in Nova Scotia, which she regards as her second home. She is a science writer for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, where she lives with her husband. The Cartographer of No Man’s Land is her first novel.

Photo © Karl Beighley