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Faber tunes into d

01.01.70 | Catherine Neilan

Faber has signed a début novel that has been written like a musical score, in which action, dialogue, thought and a soul-inspired soundtrack are layered throughout the pages.

Lee Brackstone, publishing director at Faber UK, and Mitzi Angel of Faber US, signed Sound by T M Wolf in a significant five- figure deal for world rights via Bonnie Nadell.

The publisher said it was “the story of a young man who falls in love: the most familiar of stories, yet told in the most unfamiliar of ways” adding it was “a tale told in landscape rather than portrait form”. Brackstone compared it to David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System, as well as works by Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer.

He explained: “The narrative-descriptive prose is separated from the dialogue, which is presented as a musical score. This also allows him to present people’s thoughts as they are speaking, as there are different registers of thoughts and sounds.” He added the storyline was very simple —set on the New Jersey shoreline over the course of a summer—but the format and design were “so unusual” and the concept had “very exciting digital potential”.

“You can imagine reading and experiencing it on an iPad would be quite a unique experience,” said Brackstone. “I haven’t read an American début like this for a decade. It feels very fresh, and there has been lots of excitement about it in Europe.”

Faber has already signed deals with Berlin Verlag in Germany and Einaudi in Italy. The book will be published simultaneously in the UK and US in August 2011.

• Catherine Neilan
• Faber
• Rights deal