Unwin strikes major deal for debut - again
19.01.10 | Benedicte Page
Helen Garnons-Williams at Bloomsbury has fought off no fewer than 11 UK publishers, ranging a spectrum from Bantam to Faber and Chatto, to acquire a literary first novel for “a high six-figure sum”.
Garnons-Williams bought British Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman from agent Jo Unwin at Conville and Walsh, who also this week concluded a seven-way auction for Eddie Izzard’s account of his epic bout of running, Marathon Man.
Conville and Walsh reports the translation markets have been “going mad” for Pigeon English, with rights director Jake Smith-Bosanquet concluding an Italian deal with Piemme for (Euros sign) 150,000 and a “great” Spanish deal with Salamandra, while auctions are currently running in Holland, France and Germany.
Pigeon English is described as “a wildly funny and idiosyncratic first person narrative” about a 12-year-old boy from a Ghanaian immigrant family who move to London.
The boy lands himself in terrible trouble when he accidentally witnesses a crime on a council estate. The author, who is aged 33 and currently unemployed following a redundancy last year, submitted his novel on the slush pile and Unwin “worked through several drafts” with him before sending it out to publishers.
Unwin’s colleague Patrick Walsh said: “What makes that story for me is that Jo, who had no client list when she joined us 15 months ago - having been recommended to us by Richard Beswick at Little Brown - made the time to work very diligently through the slush pile with David Llewellyn, our brilliant slush pile reader.”
Walsh pointed out that just five months ago, Unwin and Llewellyn also found Australian writer Rebecca James’ debut Beautiful Malice, which Unwin sold to Faber and in the US to Bantam in a $650,000 deal. Rights to Beautiful Malice have now been sold in 34 languages, with the book set to appear in the UK and US later this year, and the author “now healthily a dollar millionaire, and probably a sterling millionaire if I do the sums,” according to Walsh.
Pigeon English is to be published in the spring of 2011.
