Woody Allen, the controversial filmmaker, is set to release his first novel later this year through independent publisher Swift Press. The book, titled What’s With Baum?, follows a middle-aged Jewish journalist turned novelist who is consumed by anxiety and whose marriage is failing.
The publisher describes the protagonist, Baum, as an intellectual crippled by neurotic concerns about life's futility. His third marriage is on the rocks, and he has impulsively tried to kiss a young journalist during an interview, an incident she is about to make public. Baum also suspects his brother of seducing his wife and is uneasy about her closeness with her son and a neighbour.
Allen, now 89, has previously written short stories, essays, and a memoir, Apropos of Nothing, published in 2020. That memoir was dropped by its original US publisher, Hachette, after staff protests over allegations that Allen sexually abused his daughter Dylan Farrow in the early 1990s. Allen has consistently denied the claims, calling them a fabrication.
The 160-page novel is scheduled for release in September. Swift Press publisher Mark Richards expressed excitement, calling the book 'funny, clever, engrossing and wonderfully human'. Swift Press, founded in 2020, has an imprint called Forum that publishes works challenging contemporary orthodoxies.
