With no single title emerging as the big book of the
fair, a handful of titles--fiction and nonfiction--caught the attention
of fair-goers, and the wallets of editors. Here, a rundown of some of
the books people were talking about at this year's London Book Fair:
Two debut novels which sold in rumored seven-figure deals--Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and DeSales Harrison's The Waters & the Wild--were
of course subjects of chatter. Gyasi's book, an epic about two
half-sisters born in 18th century Ghana, was nabbed just before the
fair, in a deal William Morris Endeavor's Eric Simonoff brokered with
Knopf's Jordan Pavlin. Harrison's literary thriller sold in the States
on the eve of the fair, with agent Bill Clegg, who now has his own
shingle, closing a North American rights deal with Penguin Random
House's Kate Medina.
Another novel that came up in talk during the fair was Affinity Konar's Mischling,
which Lee Boudreaux won U.S. rights to, after a two-day auction.
Sterling Lord's Jim Rutman sold the book, which is set in Poland in 1944
and follows twin sisters selected by Josef Mengele as subjects of his
horrific genetics studies. (Mengele is the German SS officer and
physician known, infamously, as Auschwtiz's "Angel of Death.") After
Auschwitz is liberated, one sister, along with a fellow survivor, sets
off on a journey across Poland to find the other sister, as well as
Mengele, in order to exact revenge on the Nazi doctor. The book, which
Boudreaux plans to publish in fall 2016, had also sold, at press time,
in a number of other countries. Sterling Lord's Szilvia Molnar closed
preempts in, among other places, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and
Israel.
Ali Land's debut, Good Me, Bad Me,
also cropped up in various conversations. Christina Kopprasch at
Flatiron Books nabbed the novel, at auction, from Sasha Raskin at the
Agency Group. At press time, sales had also closed in, among other
places, France, Germany, Holland, and Greece. In the novel Milly, the
teenage daughter of a serial killer, gets a seemingly fresh start at
life, thanks to being raised in a foster home and given a new identity.
In spite of this, Kopprasch explained, Milly's "ambition to be good is
tested." Land, Kopprasch added, currently works as a private
investigator, but has long been interested in this novel's subject
matter; she has a background in adolescent mental health, and her
college dissertation was called "Children Who Kill."
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