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Serpent’s Tail has scooped a historical fiction debut and three works of translated fiction amid a raft of acquisitions for its main and classics lists, publishing in 2023 and 2024.
All acquisitions were made by editor Leonora Craig Cohen, whose own debut short story collection, Parallel Hells (Sceptre), written as Leon Craig, has just been published.
Cohen purchased UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to The Disenchantment by Celia Bell from Sabhbh Curran and Lucy Morris at Curtis Brown on behalf of Anna Stein at ICM Partners.
Publishing as a lead debut in February 2023, the novel is a "gorgeous" historical novel that follows two women in 17th-century Paris who are drawn into a sinister situation following a bid to keep their love affair a secret.
Also publishing in February 2023 is Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü, translated by Maureen Freely. World English-language rights were purchased from Nermin Mollaoglu at the Kalem Agency and the US edition will be published by Transit Books.
The publication marks the first English translation publication of the Turkish work of autofiction, an account of one liberal woman writer’s fight to survive depression and carve out her own path in Istanbul in the 1950s and 60s. Özlü herself was born in 1943 in Turkey and lived in Paris, Ankara, Istanbul, Berlin and Zurich, where she died in 1986.
Confrontations by Simone Atangana Bekono, translated by Suzanne Heukensfeldt Jansen, will be published in January 2024, for which UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, were purchased from Lisette Verhagen at PFD.
A "bold and unsettling" debut novel from an acclaimed Dutch poet about race, belonging and the legacies of violence, it sees Atabong arrive at a juvenile detention centre to start a six-month sentence for an act of vengeance after years of racist bullying. Instead of the simplistic contrition she is expected to feel by the counsellors, the protagonist arrives at her own complex understanding of remorse, rehabilitation and dignity.
In summer 2024, Serpent’s Tail will publish Tongueless by Lau Yee-Wa, translated by Jennifer Feeley, for which Cohen obtained world English-language rights from Li Kangqin at the New River Agency. Described as a "haunting exploration of betrayal and manipulation", the novel follows two rival teachers at a secondary school in Hong Kong, who are instructed to switch from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin—or lose their jobs. Wai crumples under the pressure and dies by suicide, leaving her colleague Ling to face seismic political and cultural change alone and uncertain of her role in the other’s demise.
"I couldn’t be more proud of Serpent’s Tail’s record as a home to provocative and original new writing from around the globe and I’m thrilled to bring these four unique novels into the fold," Cohen said. "Each writer has a totally distinctive voice that reaches across eras and countries to seize your attention and surprise you with a new way of seeing the world."