Forget New York, some of the most ambitious literature in America is happening in California

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Set us as preferred When the Booker Prize longlist was recently announced, it included a book with the memorable title “May We Feed the King.” The debut novel by British author Rebecca Perry isn’t yet available in the U.S., and when it does hit shelves, it will be coming from Transit Books, a small Bay Area publisher run by the husband-and-wife team Adam Z.Levy and Ashley Nelson Levy.Cited by the Booker committee as “a playful, stirring meditation on history and storytelling” about a curator and a king, the book “has been an early favorite with indie booksellers,” Ashley says.“We knew the book was special when we acquired it,” Adam adds.

“Ever since, we’ve been crossing our fingers and knocking on wood and sending up flares to the Booker gods, and sent the book to the printer a little earlier than usual just in case.”Transit, known for publishing intelligent international fiction, began about a decade ago, when Ashley and Adam were convinced that great works of literature was being passed over by New York publishers, and that those books should have a place in America.There were, Adam says, “really great authors who might have incredible reputations elsewhere not finding publishing houses here that are able to champion them in a way that gets them to access to a broader readership.”The two were working full-time jobs while talking about their literary dreams over the dining room table.They had met at Columbia in New York and both worked in publishing there before moving to California, where Ashley is from.They carefully set out to connect with the international literary community and went through the slow process of launching Transit as a nonprofit.

They now have a small staff, an office in Oakland and count a Nobel Prizewinner, Jon Fosse, among their authors.At the same time Transit was starting o...