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Fig Tree has scooped a new novel and story collection by Claire Fuller, who won the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize with her previous book Unsettled Ground (Fig Tree).
Helen Garnons-Williams, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to Body of Water from Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubinstein. It will publish in spring 2023.
Body of Water is described as “a taut and emotionally charged novel about freedom and captivity, survival and sacrifice and whether you can save anyone before you save yourself”. It follows Neffy, a young woman running away from grief and from the one big mistake that cost her her career. When she answers the call to volunteer in a vaccine trial, it offers a way for her to pay off her many debts and, perhaps, to begin to make peace with the past. But when the world outside her hospital window is utterly transformed, Neffy finds herself abandoned – along with the remaining four other volunteers – in a future they never believed could actually unfold.
While inside, she’s introduced to a pioneering and controversial technology that allows her to revisit memories from her life before. Seduced by the possibility of being reunited virtually with her loved ones, perhaps the only way she will ever be able to see them again, her drive to leave the unit begins to falter.
Garnons-Williams said: “A new novel from the enormously talented Claire Fuller is always a cause for celebration, and we are thrilled to be publishing Body of Water at Fig Tree. A dazzling testament to her skill, subtlety and originality as a writer, it combines a gripping, speculative fiction plot with a beautifully written and affecting story of memory, love, survival… and octopuses.”
Fuller added: “I’m absolutely delighted that Fig Tree will be publishing Body of Water. Helen has been such a passionate and enthusiastic champion of my previous novels, and I’m really looking forward to working with her on this book and short story collection. And I know I’m in safe hands with the rest of the Fig Tree and Penguin team.”