Johanna Joli
Psychologist. Co-author of From Darkness to Dawn.
Johanna Joli is the pen name of a UK psychologist who has spent many years helping people recover from manipulation, coercive control and betrayal. From Darkness to Dawn, written with the journalist Juliette Mungo, is her first novel: the story of Julia, a respected anthropologist who loses her savings, her trusts and her sense of reality to a charming husband, and of the slow, hopeful work of beginning again.
The recovery chapters draw on what she has seen work in practice: the small, unglamorous steps, the friends who stay, and the patient rebuilding of a self that abuse has worn away. The book closes with a resources section for readers who recognise something of their own lives in it.
She writes under a pen name for professional and personal reasons, and gives interviews as Johanna Joli, by email or by telephone, arranged through Wren Books.
Johanna Joli on Amazon: Amazon.co.uk · Amazon.com
Juliette Mungo
Journalist. Co-author of From Darkness to Dawn.
Juliette Mungo is the pen name of a journalist. With the psychologist Johanna Joli she has written From Darkness to Dawn, a dual-narrative novel that follows one woman’s recovery from coercive control and financial ruin while the man responsible moves quietly on to his next target.
It is her first novel. She writes under a pen name for professional and personal reasons.
Juliette Mungo on Amazon: Amazon.co.uk · Amazon.com
Why the pen names
The pen names are part of the story. The professional worlds that gave the novel its authority are the same worlds that ask its authors to keep their names off the cover: a psychologist owes confidentiality to the people she has worked with, and a book about a manipulative man is not something either author wished to attach to her own front door.
So the names on the cover are Johanna Joli and Juliette Mungo, and they will stay that way. Interviews, press and correspondence are handled through the imprint, and the authors do not supply photographs. What they will talk about, at length, is the book: how coercive control works, why capable people fall for it, and what recovery looks like.