| By Katie Allen
And Other Stories has acquired the new novel by prize-winning South African author Ivan Vladislavić.
World English language Rights (excluding South Africa) in Double Negative were acquired from Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann.
The novel focuses on apartheid-era university dropout Neville Lister whose life is changed when he is sent to meet photographer Saul Auerbach.
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Sarah Lotz
Just days before Frankfurt, Hodder and Stoughton have had a major pre-emptive offer accepted for world rights in THE THREE and one other novel by Sarah Lotz. The offer was made on the strength of a 33 page partial manuscript less than a day after Oliver Munson had submitted to a select group of editors. Rights have so far been sold by Hodder in the US to Reagan Arthur Books, Editrice Nord in Italy and Fleuve Nour in France with auctions and offering underway in many other territories.
Oli says: “When Anne and Oliver turned up on our doorstep unannounced, I knew they meant business. There was a phenomenal amount of interest in the incredibly brief time THE THREE was on the market but the passion and commitment shown by the two of them quickly convinced both author and agent that Hodder was the right home for Sarah’s terrifying imagination”
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Deon Meyer
Deon Meyer‘s new Benny Griessel crime thriller 7 DAE (published in Afrikaans by Human & Rousseau, English title 7 DAYS) tops South African charts and TRACKERS, which managed to fend off the likes of Paolo Coelho, James Patterson, and many others, to maintain the Number One spot for eight weeks, is not far behind. TRACKERS was launched in the UK, USA, South Africa and Germany in September and the Sunday Times has tipped it as Meyer’s ‘best work yet’. The German edition, published by Aufbau as ROTE SPUR, has reached Number One on the KrimiZEIT Bestseller lists too.
Lauren Beukes
| By Charlotte Williams
A high-concept thriller is currently the subject of a five-way UK publisher auction, with North American rights already sold to Mulholland Books by Oliver Munson of Blake Friedmann.
Editor John Schoenfelder acquired The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, author of Zoo City (Angry Robot) and winner of this year’s Arthur C Clarke award, and one other novel in the deal. The Shining Girls will be published in spring 2013, with Munson describing it as “a high concept thriller about a time travelling serial killer”.
It is understood three UK publishers tried to pre-empt the titles, two offering six-figure sums, and Munson is currently holding a UK auction with five publishers in the running with bidding at six-figures in the first round. He also expects to hold a South African auction, with German rights in the two books pre-empted by Rowohlt.
Frankfurt Book Fair 2011
| By Graeme Neill
If This is Home, Stuart Evers’ follow-up to his short-story collection Ten Stories About Smoking, is one of Aitken Alexander‘s hot books for Frankfurt Book Fair 2011. It is also selling Tim Lott’s first novel in seven years. Under the Same Stars is about two brothers on a US road trip to see their dying father who abandoned them as children. The agency is hoping for further international rights deals for débuts The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen and Snake Ropes by Jess Richards. In non-fiction, it is selling Molly Birnbaum’s Season to Taste, about how a precocious cook lost her ability to cook after an accident removed her sense of smell. It is taking offers on A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen, the story of a homeless man whose cat helped him deal with the past.
