thebookseller.com THURSDAY 12


04.2018


At the London Book Fair


ISTORICAL AND DYSTO- PIAN fiction tapping into conversations around


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Feminist fiction tops the bill at Olympia H


feminism and the #MeToo movement were the hot manu- scripts going for big money at this year’s London Book Fair. One such title, The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams (inset), went for a six-figure sum in the US as The Bookseller Daily went to press, with Doubleday’s Lee Boudreaux scooping North American rights. Billed as “a novel about women’s bodies and women’s minds, and the way each has of haunting the other”, UK rights to the novel are on submission, with several editors enthused. It’s set in 1871 in a Massa- chusets girls’ school, where students begin to develop strange symptoms and turn to a sinister physician who claims to have a cure.


The deal follows Chandler


Baker’s The Whisper Network, about four women’s take-down


of a sleazy male c.e.o., won by Sphere; Vardø, Kiran Millwood


Hargrave’s witch trial-inspired tale of an all-female fishing island, won by Picador; Joanne Ramos’ speculative novel The Farm, which feeds into conver- sations around ownership of women’s bodies (pre-empted by Bloomsbury); and Aſter the Flood, Kassandra Montag’s tale of a mother’s fight to find her daughter, which went to


HarperCollins (see p06). Katie Brown, commission-


ing editor at Trapeze, said: “All the big books are coming out of the US, and are all in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale: dysto- pian and feminist. These are the books everyone is talking about. I think it is in response to the #MeToo movement, which is not going anywhere. Books with strong female characters are really popular, and are selling extremely well.”


Sphere commissioning editor Viola Hayden agreed that femi- nist titles were breaking into the mainstream. “Near-future dystopias, our #MeToo times... These books are timely, thought- provoking and uterly compel- ling. It’s exhilarating to see feminist fiction moving into the commercial sphere,” she said. Also capturing the zeitgeist are books unpacking some of the darker implications of Arti- ficial Intelligence, editors said. “There is an increased interest in futurism—I think because of the Cambridge Analytica stuff and worries about technology. People are more worried about AI and the implications of that... driverless cars, for example,” said Oliver Holden-Rea, senior editor at Blink Publishing. Sphere Fiction publisher Cath Burke said there had been “good energy” at this year’s LBF. “There have been excep- tional submissions; incredible reading. It’s been really exciting. Fiction feels like a lively space right now,” she said.


Nearly there: eleven and counting for Swedish thriller


A Swedish thriller with “relentless twists and turns” portraying “every parent’s nightmare” has been sold into 11 territories since it went on submission a week ago, with offers “streaming in” from other markets. The Ahlander Agency made a global submission for Matias Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family on 4th April. By the end of the day, Celadon Books in the US had pre-empted in a “major deal”. The book has since sold in 10 other markets, including Spain (Salamandra), Germany (Blanvalet), France (Sonatine) and Poland (Znak).


INSIDE


There were five other auctions ongoing as The Bookseller Daily went to press, including six publishers vying for the title in the UK. The story revolves around 19-year-


old Stella, an “ordinary teenager from an upstanding family” who is accused of murdering a shady older businessman. The story is told from the point of view of three characters: Stella; her doting father Adam, a pastor who is prepared to do anything to ensure his daughter’s freedom; and Stella’s “rational and overwrought” mother, who is a well-regarded defence lawyer.


Ahlander Agency m.d. Astri von Arbin Ahlander said: “An important ingredient in this novel’s success is that it’s fundamentally international: it is not a ‘Scandi thriller’, but a brilliant thriller, period. Editors from around the world have raved about the writing, the voice, the relentless twists and turns in plot, and the absolutely brilliant depiction of what is every parent’s nightmare.” Swede Edvardsson has writen four


previous books: two fiction titles for adults and two YA novels.


Comics laureate argues for equal billing p04 · Igloo founder Styring launches new venture p05 · MY LBF: Frankie Gray p15 Sif Sigmarsdóttir on publishing women p18· Canine behind breakout smash Dog Person hits out p24 · Horace Bent at LBF18 p30


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