Jennie Erdal

Who is Jennie Erdal?

Jennie Erdal is a Scottish writer. She is the author of Ghosting, a memoir of her childhood in a Fife mining village and of being the long-serving ghostwriter of Naim Attallah, the publisher and owner of Quartet Books. She worked for him for 20 years, first as a translator of Russian novels, then as a commissioning editor, starting the series "Quartet Encounters", and finally as unacknowledged ghostwriter. For Attallah, she researched, wrote the questions for, and edited in-depth interviews for the collection Women, and eight further volumes of interviews. Other writing under his name included two novels, a weekly newspaper column, book reviews, letters, poems and even love letters. Ghosting was the first book written under her own name. Described by Boyd Tonkin, literary editor of The Independent, as a "modest classic", it was chosen as a BBC Radio 4 "Book of the Week". Its literary merit led it to be shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book Award and for the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. Originally brought out by Canongate Books, it was published by Doubleday in Canada and the US, by Cossee in the Netherlands and by Aufbau in Germany.