James Hannah

James Hannah writes British fiction shaped by memory, regret, humor, and care. His debut, The A to Z of You and Me, appeared in Britain through Doubleday and Black Swan in 2015, followed by a Sourcebooks Landmark edition in the United States in 2016. Its narrator, Ivo, is receiving hospice care when his nurse Sheila asks him to name a body part for each letter and connect it with a story. The exercise gradually assembles his friendships, mistakes, family ties, and relationship with Mia. Hannah avoids a strictly chronological life story; instead, physical details prompt scenes whose meaning changes as the reader understands more of Ivo's past. Humor softens but never erases the novel's concern with mortality and consequence. The unusual structure is inseparable from its subject, since the body supplies both the game's vocabulary and the record of a life. Hannah turns the alphabet into a framework for asking what one person remembers, conceals, regrets, and finally chooses to share.