Book deals are flying thick and fast at the annual London book fair, as swarms of publishers descend on west London to snap up the starriest names and fresh-faced debuts on offer. Here are some of the biggest deals finalised on the first day of the 2017 fair:
Forthcoming Matt Haig novel optioned by Benedict Cumberbatch
Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch is to star in a film of Matt Haig’s forthcoming novel How to Stop Time. Due for publication in July, How to Stop Time is Haig’s first adult novel in four years and tells the story of unassuming Tom Hazard, who outwardly appears to be a typical 41-year-old history teacher working in a London school. But behind the facade lies a secret: he is centuries old and has lived through everything from Elizabethan England to jazz age Paris, in countries from New York to the South Seas.
Cumberbatch will play Hazard, as well as serve as an executive producer. StudioCanal has pre-empted rights to the adaptation, which will be produced by Cumberbatch’s production company SunnyMarch, and Jamie Byng, chief executive of Canongate Books and Haig’s UK publisher.
In what the writer described as a “glorious coincidence”, Haig told the Guardian that Cumberbatch had been his top choice for Hazard. “As I was writing the book I visualised Cumberbatch as the central character,” he said. “There is no one else with that same mix of intensity or mystery.”
Haig, who has previously worked with StudioCanal – rewriting parts of the 2014 film Paddington – said he would be involved in the film, although in what capacity remained unclear. “I had to pinch myself because it is like my dreams have come true,” he added.
New Peter Carey in January 2018
Two time Man Booker winner Peter Carey has a new novel coming in January 2018: A Long Way from Home, to be published by Faber & Faber. Set in Australia and opening in 1953, the novel follows the Bobbsey family and their neighbour Willie as they decide to enter the Redex Trial, a dangerous car race that circumnavigates the country.
Eleanor Catton eco-thriller signed
Eleanor Catton – who won the Man Booker prize with The Luminaries in 2013 – is to publish her third novel in 2019. Birnam Wood is a psychological thriller centred on an eponymous guerrilla gardening outfit, a ragtag group of quarrelling leftists who move about the country cultivating other people’s land, said publisher Granta. “It’s very Shakespearean, as the title would suggest, with lots of sex and violence,” added editor Max Porter.
How Democracies Fail
Cambridge politics professor David Runciman is to publish a book in spring 2018 taking a long view on the failure of democracies. “People think that democracies only come to an end after a revolution in the third world but that’s not true,” said publisher Andrew Franklin, who signed How Democracies Fail, for Profile. It is one of a slew of recent signings of books looking at the collapse of the democratic world, which include Masha Gessen’s The Future of History: How Totalitarians Retook Russia, bought by Granta last week. “It’s a look at how autocracy functions and there are chilling parallels between Russia and what is happening now in the US,” said editor Max Porter.
Third novel by Orange-shortlisted author Jane Harris
Described as “a stunning act of literary ventriloquism”, a new historical novel based on a true story by Jane Harris has been snapped up by Faber & Faber. Sugar Money will follow “two slave brothers sent on a dangerous mission from Martinique to Grenada to recover the 42 slaves their French master claims were stolen by English invaders” and is set to be published October 2017. This will be Harris’ first novel in six years, since 2011’s Gillespie & I; her debut, The Observations, was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange prize for fiction and was later chosen by Richard and Judy as one of their 100 Books of the Decade.
Overheard – some advice to Russian writers
Translator Arch Tait at a session on new Russian literature: “I’ve translated two books recently: one was 120,000 words and the other was 150,000. In the UK we like our books to be around 80,000 words, and remember that the word count goes up by about 20,000 in translation – so my advice is to make your books shorter.”
