Hurst is an independently owned and run non-fiction publisher, based in central London but publishing globally. They have a track record of fifty years of distinguished scholarly publishing for a general readership. Today, they produce around 90 new books a year, building on their strengths in African Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, South Asian Studies and War and International Relations. More broadly, however, they commission anything that interests us, from sport to art to cooking, as long as the books have something to distinguish them.

 

Among their more celebrated authors are Africanists Olivette Otele, Gérard Prunier, Stephen Ellis and Susan Williams; renowned scholars of South Asia Alpa Shah, Christophe Jaffrelot and Faisal Devji; strategists and security experts David Kilcullen and Sir David Omand; and experts on Islam and the Muslim world Madawi Al-Rasheed, Ziauddin Sardar and Jean-Pierre Filiu. 

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Christopher Hurst founded C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. in 1969, his primary aim being to publish scrupulously edited and produced books on subjects close to his heart rather than to build a commercial empire. Christopher’s interests were eclectic, and they featured in his list from the outset, ranging from African studies, the plight of dissidents in the Cold War, the history of Scandinavia, the Muslim periphery, the Far North and anthropology. 

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At Hurst they cherish the memory of Christopher’s independence of spirit and refusal to follow the corporate path. To that end they like to publish books that surprise as well as inform their readers, while assuring them that they meet the norms of scholarly and literary excellence.

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‘The world we thought we knew has been turned upside down, and no publishing list today answers our
perplexity, or relieves our anxiety, as effectively as Hurst’s. Its commitment to original, provocative
and rigorous thinking marks it out clearly in a field dominated by the safely formulaic.’
— Pankaj Mishra

‘At a time of rapid and dislocating change, no range of books casts a more valuable light onto
the convulsions of the present than those published by Hurst.’ — Tom Holland