Jean Hannah Edelstein's This Really Isn't About You to be published by Picador

Picador to publish writer and journalist Jean Hannah Edelstein's memoir This Really Isn't About You.

Picador will publish writer and journalist Jean Hannah Edelstein's memoir This Really Isn't About You in 2018.

Jean Hannah Edelstein spent her twenties and early thirties living abroad but moved back to the USA in 2014, because her father was dying. Six weeks after she arrived in New York City, he died. Six months after that, Jean learned that she, too, was a carrier of the gene which caused the cancer that killed him.

This Really Isn't About You is a book about family, grief, survival and coming home. Above all, it's about finding your way in life – or at least, finding a way to deal with everything life has thrown at you.

Francesca Main, Publishing Director at Picador said:

'Jean Hannah Edelstein is an immensely talented writer – she's smart, funny, honest and unflinching, can turn a sentence beautifully, and like her heroine (and mine) Nora Ephron, has a brilliant, deadpan wit that can make you laugh even as she breaks your heart. She has a great many fans at Picador and I'm thrilled to welcome her to the list.'

Jean Hannah Edelstein said:

'This Really Isn't About You has been percolating in one form or another for quite a few years, and I'm so delighted to be working with Daisy and Francesca to bring it to life. And I'm especially thrilled to be published by Picador, who publish so many writers I adore.'

Daisy Parente at Lutyens & Rubinstein said:

'As a long-time fan of both Jean and Francesca, I couldn't be happier about this. Jean has been making me laugh and cry with her pitch-perfect writing for years, andI'm so pleased to be part of bringing This Really Isn't About You into the world.'

Jean Hannah Edelstein grew up in upstate New York and has since studied, lived and worked in Montreal, London and Berlin. She now lives in Brooklyn and works as a copywriter and freelance journalist, writing regularly for The GuardianThe Pool and others.

This Really Isn't About You

by Jean Hannah Edelstein

Book cover for This Really Isn't About You

Written in her inimitable, wry and insightful voice, Jean Hannah Edelstein's memoir is by turns heart-breaking, hopeful and yet also disarmingly funny. This Really Isn't About You is a book about finding your way in life. Which is to say, it’s a book about discovering you are not really in control of that at all.