Fourth Estate has acquired the story of a young Irish traveller after a four-way auction.

Claire Reihill acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to This is the Way by Gavin Corbett, plus a second novel, from agent Will Francis of Janklow & Nesbit. The title was sent unsolicited by the author to Francis.

Francis said: "I’ve been looking for a voice like Gavin’s for a long time. This is a fantastically imaginative novel, and a dark satire on our sentimental expectations of a certain kind of Irishness."
 
This is the Way is the story of a young Irish traveller, Anthony Sonaghan, who finds himself sheltering in a Dublin tenement from a blood feud between the two halves of his family.

Fourth Estate will publish in spring 2013. US rights are on offer via PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit Associates in New York, and foreign rights via Rebecca Folland at Janklow UK.

Corbett, who is in his early thirties, was born in Ballinasloe, raised in Dublin, and now lives in New York.