But consensually, of course. Davidar’s next novel will appear with his long time press, and my old motherland, McClelland & Stewart. And why not? His prose didn’t grope anybody—grope like a man might be forced to grope had his glasses been ripped from his face at a party and held for ransom before being retrieved from the bushes by police who had a helicopter in the air to find them.

On Monday, it was announced that McClelland and Stewart has acquired the former Penguin Canada president and publisher’s new novel, Ithaca. The novel, according to a press release, is “set in the international world of book publishing.”

It will be published in the fall of 2011, and must already be counted among the most-anticipated books of next year.

Davidar’s last novel, The Solitude of Emperors, which was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, was also published by M&S in 2007; Davidar and M&S president and publisher Doug Pepper have a long-standing friendship.

“We’re thrilled to be publishing Ithaca,” Pepper said in a statement. “With this book, David turns his keenly observant and passionate eye on a subject he knows well, giving us a rich, layered, and poignant novel about the publishing industry at a time of its greatest change in a century. Honest, witty, and edgy, the book’s message is ultimately hopeful, about the power of great story-telling and how it has endured and, despite the cataclysmic changes of the last several years, will continue to endure.”