Ithaka Press, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK will publish Blood Will Flow: The murderous business of oil and gas by Alex Perry. Sarah Braybrooke acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Richard Pike at C&W Agency.
A riveting portrait of a secretive industry worth trillions, Blood Will Flow is an exposé of the bloody world at the other end of the pipeline, and a morality tale for the global economy.
On March 24, 2021, in the remote north of Mozambique, 500 ISIS militants attacked the small, paradise beach town of Palma -strategically unimportant but for vast offshore gas fields that had attracted $50 billion in foreign investment, the biggest ever in Africa. As the Islamists surged through town, dragging civilians into the street and beheading them, a group of 183 men, women and children barricaded themselves inside a hotel to await rescue. They knew an oil and gas giant had a base defended by 750 soldiers and four helicopter gunships minutes away. But help never came.
Alex Perry’s spell-binding, meticulous reconstruction unearths a hidden fiasco of shattering scale, the deadliest terror attack since 9/11, and the worst ever disaster in the 150-year history of oil and gas. Woven into his account is a search for answers to a single question: How do energy companies really make such vast profits? His investigation takes him from Scotland to Pennsylvania, the Outback to the Amazon, as he tracks down the roughnecks, mercenaries, billionaires, and corporate spooks willing to shed light on an industry dogged by violence. As the revelations build, Perry is drawn into a legal drama aimed at bringing the guilty to justice.
Sarah Braybrooke said: “Alex is a veteran reporter whose tenacious investigative work and cinematic prose style make this book unputdownable. Ground-breaking, lyrical, furious, and coming at a time when energy companies imperil the planet and hold governments hostage, Blood Will Flow turns the spotlight on the industry’s power-brokers and holds them to account. It will do for oil and gas what Empire of Pain did for the pharmaceutical industry.”
British writer Perry is the author of four previous books and has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, Guardian, The Sunday Times magazine and others.
Blood Will Flow will publish in June 2025.
