• RELATED STORIES

• Second cookbook from Gok Wan

  Ebury has signed world righ...

• Tinder Press gets new Sue Monk Kidd

  Headline has bought a new n...

• More dieting for the Hairy Bikers

    Weidenfeld &...

• Avon signs five from Finch

  HarperCollins imprint Avon ...

• New Order’s Sumner signs memoir to Transworld

  Transworld has signed an au...

Constable signs cult hit Axolotl Roadkill

23.02.10 | Victoria Gallagher

Constable has signed the cult hit Axolotl Roadkill, which was written by 17-year-old Helene Hegemann.

Editorial director Andreas Campomar bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Andrew Nurnberg at Andrew Nurnberg Associates International for a five-figure sum. The German edition of the title is already in its third edition only weeks after being published, where it has been nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize.

The novel tells of the story of 16-year-old Mifti, who lives life through a haze of sex, drugs and club culture after her mother's death. The title will be published under the Corsair imprint in 2011.

Axolotl Roadkill has recently been at the centre of controversy, after it was revealed that Hegemann had used excerpts from an obscure novel called Strobo without attributing them. A list of Hegemann's sources will now be published in any further edition of the title.

Campomar described Hegemann as "a prodigy, whose stunning début... is a work of serious literary fiction".

He added: "I can’t say I have ever read anything like it. The closest comparison would be 'Skins' meets The Catcher in the Rye, but set in Noughties Berlin."

"She lives and conveys the tragedy of an abused child with an adult sensibility, together with a freshness of prose, which is, in my view, unprecedented in recent literature."

• Constable
• Corsair
• Rights deal
• Victoria Gallagher