Introducing: Picador Collection
In 2022, Picador celebrates its 50th anniversary and the launch of the Picador Collection, a new list of era-defining modern classics with a bold new look.2022 marks fifty years of Picador and the launch of the Picador Collection, a new list of contemporary classics taken from and inspired by the last fifty years of Picador’s agenda-setting and boundary-pushing publishing.
Sonny Mehta first launched Picador as an imprint in 1972 with the aim of publishing outstanding international writing. The Picador Paperback Originals quickly became known for their iconic white spines, which were the mainstay of many readers' bookshelves.
‘What defines a Picador book is the author’s voice . . .’
‘. . . The way a story is told is just as important as the story itself.’
These books were known for being challenging, contemporary and eclectic fiction and non-fiction that started conversations and inspired cult followings. These were titles that readers and booksellers eagerly pressed into each other’s hands and the hands of customers, and that held a distinctive voice at the heart of their storytelling.
Today, Picador publishes writers from all over the world and provides a platform for voices that are often not heard. It is home to Nobel Prize winners, such as V.S. Naipaul, Booker Prize winners from Patrick McCabe to Douglas Stuart and major international bestsellers.
Picador Collection introduces the best of our publishing since 1972 to a new generation of readers and sees the classic white spines reimagined with a bold new look.
The collection launched with several familiar names: from the jet-black splatter satire of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, to the unforgettable story of Jude, JB, Willem and Malcolm in Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life and the prescient, dystopian fiction of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. Titles are being added throughout the year.
Explore the Picador Collection
The first titles in the collection are books that inspire devotion. Not only are they often technically dazzling, award-winning, and culturally significant, but they each hold a unique and inimitable voice at their heart.
How Hanya Yanagihara's modern classic, A Little Life, took on a visual life of its own
Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life, explains how her novel took on a visual life online and we share just a few of our favourite images shared by fans.
A bold new look
Design has always been at the heart of Picador’s publishing, and Picador Collection has been created to give new life to these important books with a bold contemporary look.
The creative ethos behind this modern design celebrates the titles with newly commissioned illustration, photography and design. It provides a platform for artists from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and showcases striking and innovative covers from both known and unknown creators.
‘When the covers are stacked together they create a visual illusion of open books, inviting the reader to pick them up and enter into them.’
Katie Tooke, Design Manager
The result is a look that stands with and apart from other classics lists, and that is full of life.
Books that start conversations
'Believe it or not, the pandemic was entirely incidental to the plot.' Emily St John Mandel on Station Eleven
The Sea of Tranquility writer discusses parallel existences, what she would put in the Museum of Civilization and why Station Eleven was never intended to be a pandemic novel.
A guide to the works of the incomparable Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid's books are beloved for their candour, insight and honest exploration of familial relationships and colonial legacy. Here, Leah Cowan shares her guide to just some of Jamaica Kincaid's must-read works.
Jon Ronson reflects on our changing relationship with social justice
Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in a way only he can be, listen as Jon Ronson reflects on the true stories that not only inspired him but have stayed with him long after he finished writing his modern classic, and shares what his relationship with social media is like in 2022. . .
Jackie Kay reads from Red Dust Road
Watch Jackie Kay read from her unforgettable memoir, renowned for its remarkable warmth and candour, in this exclusive video.