NEWS Hamish Hamilton assembles for Brown


Frankfurt Book Fair 2020 The headlines


money début


Big


Hamish Hamilton has snapped up arguably the hotest British book at the


virtual Frankfurt Book Fair, with a six-figure pre-empt for Natasha Brown’s “visionary and unflinch- ing” concise début novel, set over the course of a single day. Editor Hermione Thompson bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Assembly from Emma Paterson at Aitken Alexander. North American rights were pre-empted by Litle, Brown, while translation rights have been sold to Suhrkamp (Germany), Grasset (France) and De Geus (the Netherlands), with submissions ongoing in multiple territories. Assembly’s narrator is an unnamed black British woman who has spent her life “climbing against the current: navigating the cut-throat world of investment banking, her boyfriend’s political


the elephant in the room. With Assembly, she reinvents what fiction can look like and what it can do, with an extraordinary ease, wit, daring, lightness of touch, unfaltering gaze and unshakeable integrit. It is quite simply exhila- rating to watch.”


Brown worked in financial


NATASHA BROWN’S NOVEL ASSEMBLY IS BILLED ‘EXHILARATING’


ambitions and her best friend’s lean-in feminism. Until one day, she is pulled up short by a life-and-death decision. Her mind darts across centuries, memories, snatches of conversation and she begins to look hard at those who spent their lives watching her.” Thompson said: “Natasha is a


writer who has no problem naming


services aſter studying Maths at Cambridge Universit. She developed Assembly aſter receiving a 2019 London Writer Award, the annual development programme from charit Spread the Word for writers from backgrounds under- represented in publishing. Paterson called Assembly a “distilled and daring work of fiction that rearranges the reader as powerfully as it reconfigures the form of the novel itself.” Hamish Hamilton will release the title in July next year.


Reporting Tom Tivnan Nosy Crow signs up Jones’ words homage


Nosy Crow is to release an anthol- ogy of “inspiring words and what they mean to us” for young readers, compiled by long-time Sunday Times children’s book reviewer Nicolette Jones. Writes of Passage will feature more than 100 pieces of writing “from Shakespeare to Stephen Hawking; Greta Thunberg to Galileo; and Lin-Manuel Miranda to Martin Luther King, Jr.” Tom Bonnick, Nosy Crow senior


commissioning editor and business development manager, bought world rights, in all languages, from Abi Sparrow at SP the Agency. Nosy Crow also acquired world


Nurnberg issues warning over Chinese ISBN crackdown


At the fair


The Chinese market is “suffering” from the government’s crackdown on the number of ISBNs being issued to publishers of foreign writers, attendees of the Frankfurt Book Fair heard from agent Andrew Nurnberg right in a


virtual session on “Publishing and the Rights Trade in Covid World” . In a session yesterday (13th October) with publishing and rights


consultant Diane Spivey, Nurnberg said his agency was doing its best to support authors’ sales in China, extending to intervening in books’ marketing on social media. However, he said the Chinese government “is not happy with so many foreign books being trans- lated by publishers in their country”, to the detriment of authors. He continued: “China unfortunately is suffering right now from something besides the effects of Covid. It is actually suffering from a major reduction in the number of ISBN numbers that the government is giving to publishers... There is also something of a trade war going on. So this is really not very good for our authors out there.”


04 14th October 2020


English-language rights for the use of all material in the collection. The book will be published in May 2021. Bonnick said: “This is a wonderful collection, curated with brilliant care and attention. I can’t think of a better book for the present time, filled with words that will inspire, comfort, challenge and cheer us.” In addition to her two decades


as the Sunday Times children’s book reviewer, Jones has been a writer and broadcaster, is a Royal Literary Fund fellow, and was a nominee for the 2012 Eleanor Farjeon Award for outstanding service to the world of children’s books.


GUILAINE KINOUANI WILL BE PUBLISHED BY EBURY IN THE UK


Ebury buys guide to dealing with racial trauma


Ebury has bought a guide to overcoming racial trauma and discrimination and “essential anti-racist resource for allies who want to do better” by psychologist Guilaine Kinouani. Marianne Tatepo, commission-


ing editor at Ebury Press and Pop Press, acquired world all-language rights to Living While Black direct from the author. It is Tatepo’s first acquisition since moving to Ebury’s Lifestyle team in April 2020. She was previously at Penguin General and Fourth Estate/William Collins, and is the founder of the Black Agents & Editors’ Group. Living While Black “brings


together powerful case studies, eye-opening research and effec- tive coping techniques in the face of racial adversity”. It also promises to help readers to set psychological boundaries and process trauma; protect children from racism; and handle difficult race-based conversations. Kinouani is a UK-based French


radical and critical psychologist of Congolese descent, and works as a senior psychologist and is an adjunct professor at Syracuse University, London. She is also the writer behind the blog RaceReflections.co.uk. Tatepo said: “How can we,


black people, reclaim our focus without exhausting ourselves? I’ve followed Race Reflections for many years, and can’t think of anyone better placed to answer this than Guilaine, who has worked tirelessly to uncover how systemic racism impacts our health, and how to—where possi- ble—buffer its insidious effects.”


© Bernd Hartung


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