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Brighton-based Myriad Editions has made its first acquisition since receiving Arts Council England funding to develop the publisher's fiction list.
Candida Lacey, managing director of Myriad, bought UK and Commonwealth rights to a debut novel by Isabel Ashdown, entitled Glasshopper, from agent Adrian Weston at Raft.
An extract from the novel has already been awarded the 2008 Mail on Sunday Novel Prize, and was praised by judges such as Fay Weldon and John Mortimer.
Lacey described Ashdown as "a very exciting new voice". She added: "Glasshopper is expertly crafted with a strong sense of time and place, and passages of almost unbearable poignancy."
The book is told from the perspective of teenage Jake during the 1980s, and his mother in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, as he deals with the question of his paternity and his mother's "drunken ramblings". As he travels from Portsmouth to the Dordogne, Jake stumbles across "the long-held secrets of another generation".
Myriad said the book "reflects on the powerlessness of childhood, while celebrating the enduring optimism of youth, even in the face of tragedy".
It will be published in October this year.