Associate Publisher Laura Hassan acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada and ANZ) from David Grossman at the David Grossman Literary Agency. Faber will publish Having and Being Had on 7 January 2021.

‘My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts,’ Eula Biss writes; ‘the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.’ Having just purchased her first home, she now embarks on a roguish and risky self-audit of the value system she has bought into. The result is a radical interrogation of work, leisure and capitalism. Described by the New York Times as a writer who ‘advances from all sides, like a chess player’, Biss brings her approach to the lived experience of capitalism. Playfully ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokémon, across bars and laundromats and universities, she asks, of both herself and her class, ‘In what have we invested?’ 

Associate Publisher Laura Hassan said:

Biss is one of the most original authors at work today. She delves into the stuff of life we try to avoid thinking about – in this case money, capitalism and privilege. There couldn’t be a better time to examine what we value and how we can live an ethical life.

Eula Biss is the author of three books, including the New York Times-bestseller On Immunity: An Inoculation, which was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review, and Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, The Believer and elsewhere, and has been supported by an NEA Literature Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Praise for Eula Biss:

‘A major achievement . . . With astute consideration, this expansive and intimate accumulation asks the questions that touch all our lives.’ CLAUDIA RANKINE

‘One of the best younger essayists at work.’ REBECCA SOLNIT

‘Having and Being Had offers us a probing tour of capitalism and class that sidesteps posturing and jargon in favour of clarity, humility and incitement.’ MAGGIE NELSON

‘In this witty, genre-bending book, Eula Biss smashes the taboo against talking about money with exhilarating results . . . and disarming honesty and grace.’ JENNY OFFILL

‘Eula Biss’s prescient new book gave me new language for things I didn’t know I felt . . . A brilliant, lacerating re-examination of our relationship to what we own and why, and who in turn might own us.’ ALEXANDER CHEE

‘No contemporary writer I know explores and confronts her own societal responsibilities better than Eula Biss.’ ALEKSANDAR HEMON