Richard Russo's Everybody's Fool to Allen & Unwin

Allen & Unwin is to publish Everybody's Fool, the sequel to 1993 novel Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo.

Clare Drysdale, editorial director at Allen & Unwin, acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Everybody’s Fool from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Sobol Weber.

In the same deal, Drysdale also secured UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) e-book rights to four additional backlist novels including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, which has not been available as an e-book in the UK before.

Nobody's Fool was originally published in the US in 1993, and in the UK by Chatto & Windus in 1995. It follows Sully who is divorced from his own wife and carrying on "halfheartedly" with another man's. Saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps.

Everybody's Fool picks up roughly a decade after the events of Nobody's Fool. Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a cardiologist’s estimate that he has only a year or two left to live, and it’s hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life.

Drysdale said: "It’s such an honour to be publishing Richard Russo’s funny and wise new novel, Everybody’s Fool. It’s particularly pleasing that it’s a sequel to Nobody’s Fool, one of my favourite books of all time and my gateway drug to a long love affair with Richard’s work. No doubt many booksellers with long memories will be equally thrilled to return to North Bath and find out what Sully, Rub and Carl have been up to."

Allen & Unwin will publish the paperback edition of Nobody's Fool in January 2017, alongside the hardback of Everybody's Fool.