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Weidenfeld & Nicolson has won rights to a memoir from a former sniper battling Isis in a five-way auction.
Editorial director Paul Murphy acquired British Commonwealth rights to Long Shot by a British Kurd and former journalist, a 34-year-old known as ‘Azad’, from Patrick Walsh at the Pew Literary Agency.
Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher at Grove Atlantic, bought North American rights for six figures with “German, Italian, Dutch offers in immediately and interest building everywhere” according to Walsh.
Azad was part of a group of volunteer fighters who first defeated Isis, in the battle of Kobani, despite being wildly outnumbered and outgunned.
Walsh said: “Azad was personally responsible for eliminating around 200 Isis jihadis. And in person, he’s a charming clever young intellectual, who only took up arms when Isis invaded the Kurdish autonomous region of Syria where he was then working as a social worker.”