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  • Published: 15 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9780224089098
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $42.99

Cassandra Darke



Britain’s favourite graphic novelist returns with her best book yet

***WINNER OF THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2020***

'Simmonds is a copper-bottomed genius... she is as brilliant a writer as Britain has' Jenny Colgan, Mail Online

Cassandra Darke is an art dealer, mean, selfish, solitary by nature, living in Chelsea in a house worth £7 million.

She has become a social pariah, but doesn't much care. Between one Christmas and the next, she has sullied the reputation of a West End gallery and has acquired a conviction for fraud, a suspended sentence and a bank balance drained by lawsuits. On the scale of villainy, fraud seems to Cassandra a rather paltry offence - her own crime involving 'no violence, no weapon, no dead body'.

But in Cassandra's basement, her young ex-lodger, Nicki, has left a surprise, something which implies at least violence and probably a body . . . Something which forces Cassandra out of her rich enclave and onto the streets. Not those local streets paved with gold and lit with festive glitter, but grimmer, darker places, where she must make the choice between self-sacrifice and running for her life.

  • Published: 15 November 2018
  • ISBN: 9780224089098
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $42.99

About the author

Posy Simmonds

Posy Simmonds is the author of many books for adults and children, including Gemma Bovery, Lulu and the Flying Babies and Fred, the film of which was nominated for an Oscar. She has won international awards for her work, including the 2009 Grand prix de la critique bande dessinée for Tamara Drewe. Both Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe have been made into successful feature films. Her third graphic novel, Cassandra Darke was published in 2018. She lives in London.

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Praise for Cassandra Darke

In Simmonds's latest nuanced, warm-hearted satire a heartless art dealer makes a discovery that pushes her out of grim rut and into a dark quest.

Guardian, 50 of the Biggest Books to Look Out For in Autumn 2018

[Posy Simmonds] is back with a new anti-heroine… [and] jewel-sharp illustrations.

Claire Armitstead, Guardian

Simmonds’ drawings are exquisitely observed, and seamlessly incorporate text messages and online news reports. Her muted palette, with occasional splashes of colour, is absorbing and in the curmudgeonly Cassandra… Simmonds has produced another character that comes living and breathing off the page.

Carl Wilkinson, Financial Times

[This] glorious, inky black tale about a mean-spirited old bag of a Chelsea art deal provides more proof of [Posy Simmond’s] genius.

Rachel Cooke, Observer, **Books of the Year**

The new graphic novel by cartoonist, writer and national treasure Posy Simmonds... is a page-turner, [but] it’s impossible to gallop through words and pictures that are so richly textured, so sharply observed.

Francis Wheen, Mail on Sunday

What a huge treat awaits the readers of this book… [Cassandra Darke] makes one pause in awe to consider the sheet amount of wit, invention, insight, observation, skill, dedication and care that has been distilled into this 94 pages.

Matthew Sturgis, The Oldie

A Christmas crime story that’s bags of fun… Simmonds’ pictorial storytelling is a joy.

Anthony Cummins, Metro

Scrooge is reimagined for 21st-century London in Posy Simmonds’s devilishly good graphic novel, Cassandra Darke — her first in a decade. Cassandra is a marvellous creation… There is too much clever detail in each of the panels to take in everything at first read — but Cassandra is an antiheroine you’ll want to return to.

Siobhan Murphy, The Times

Posy Simmonds is the mother of the British graphic novel… The end [of Cassandra Darke] is startlingly poignant, and like all good satire it has a quiet reflection on human mortality at its heart.

Lucy Lethbridge, Tablet

Simmonds is a copper-bottomed geniusshe is as brilliant a writer as Britain has.

Jenny Colgan, Mail Online

Posy Simmonds's delightful new graphic novel Cassandra Darke, full of wonderfully observed vignettes... [is] treasurable.

David Sexton, Evening Standard **Books of the Year**

Simmonds is a copper-bottomed genius, I have absolutely no idea why she isn't a baroness.

Jenny Colgan, UK Press Syndication

Festive-season glitter and grimness mingle in this handsome Christmas book.

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times, **Books of the Year**

Simmonds offers a sharp portrait of a polarised London.

James Smart, Guardian, **Books of the Year**

A page-turning graphic novel… sharp, witty, deliciously observant and so exquisitely drawn it took my breath away. The perfect book for Christmas.

Jonathan Pugh, Daily Mail

The visual and moral chiaroscuro of the novel, and its unflinching depiction of pathos and loneliness in the most and least privileged of social milieus, make it a strong contender, if not for the meretricious glitter of literary awards, then for the more lasting prize of inclusion in the canon of comic-strip masterpieces.

Jane Shilling, Prospect

Simmonds has long been something of a national treasure.

Teddy Jamieson, Herald Scotland

Posy Simmonds’s…line and way of telling a story are equally deft.

Evening Standard, *Summer Reads of 2019*