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Oneworld has acquired what could be the final novel from prominent US novelist Peter Matthiessen.
Rosalind Porter bought UK rights to In Paradise from Hal Fessenden at Penguin US. It is among Porter's first acquisitions for Oneworld since she joined as editorial director for fiction in October.
Porter said: "At the age of 86, Matthiessen has suggested that this may be his last book, so I feel doubly privileged to be publishing this powerful and challenging novel about how we try to apprehend an evil beyond all understanding by one of the greatest writers working in English today."
Matthiessen’s first work of fiction since 2008 National Book Award winner Shadow Country, In Paradise tells the story of a group who come together for a meditation retreat at the site of a Second World War concentration camp, and the upsetting revelations that surface during their time together. It will be published in June 2014.
Porter has also acquired world English language rights to A Perfect Crime by A Yi, a "stylish" Chinese novel about a teenager who murders his best friend. She bought rights from Marysia Juszczakiewicz at the Peony Literary Agency. Porter commented: "A Yi has written an exceptionally dark and beautiful novel."
The novel will be translated by Anna Holmwood and be published in early 2015.
Porter's third deal was signing British Commonwealth, excluding Canada, rights to The Invention of Exile by Vanessa Manko from Caroline Michel at PFD. Already attracting plaudits from Salman Rushdie, Siri Hustvedt and Colum McCann, it traces the life of a Russian émigré after he is deported from America during the Red Scare and ends up in Mexico City, stateless, alone and living amid ghosts.
Porter said that Manko "writes with the authority of someone who has been writing for decades about a subject that can easily slip into cliché through stock characters and hackneyed plotlines in a way that feels completely new. It is a novel about the ultimate sacrifice made all the more powerful by the fact that it’s partially based on the life of her own grandfather."
The Invention of Exile will be released in July 2014.