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Welsh début for Canongate

Canongate has snapped up two books at auction by a début novelist. Editorial director Anya Serota paid a "competitive" sum for world rights in two books by Mairi Strachan, in a deal with agent Lavinia Trevor.

Canongate will publish the first, The Earth Hums in B Flat, in April 2009. The book is a magical realist look at dark secrets in a Welsh village. It centres on Gwenni Morgan, a girl who loves Albert Campion detective novels and strawberry instant whip, and who can fly in her sleep. Strachan, a former librarian, is bilingual Welsh-English. She recently completed an MA in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University online, while living in west Wales.

Serota said that Strachan is a "brilliant, distinctive and wise new voice". She added: "It is a novel with a wonderful, distinctive spirit, in some ways reminiscent of early Kate Atkinson or Niccolò Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared, but ultimately all its own."

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