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Station Eleven author pens 'brilliant follow up'
Picador has acquired a new novel from Station Eleven writer Emily St. John Mandel to publish in 2019.
The new book, called The Glass Hotel, begins in 2004 when a young cook named Nicole Stevenson disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania. Four years later, a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it. Moving back and forth in time, The Glass Hotel traces the intriguing tangle of lives caught up in both events.
Sophie Jonathan, senior editor at Picador, who acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, said St. John Mandel's prose was "as poignant as ever", with the "galloping" pace of a thriller.
Refering to the book as a "brilliant follow up" to Station Eleven, she also hinted the book will include a character that fans might recognise.
Mandel’s last novel, Station Eleven, published with Picador in the UK in 2014 and is currently being developed into a television series by Scott Steindorff and Dylan Russell’s Stone Village Productions. About an outbreak of a flu that wipes out 99% of the world’s population, it was the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2015, shortlisted for the 2015 National Book Award, shortlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and a finalist for 2015 PEN/Faulkner Prize.
"Ever since Station Eleven, I’ve been waiting with bated breath to know what Emily would write next, and The Glass Hotel really blew me away," said Jonathan. "Emily's prose is as thoughtful and as poignant as ever, and she has the most amazing ability to inject atmosphere and real drama simultaneously: I loved every one of these rich and vivid characters, they have so much to give the reader to think about - so much to say - and yet this narrative moves along with the pace of a thriller."
She added: "To read The Glass Hotel is to gallop along both stunned by its elegance and caught up in its intriguing story, and there’s a brilliant surprise for readers in there too – a character they might just recognise...The Glass Hotel is a big, exciting novel and a brilliant follow-up to Station Eleven. I can't wait to publish it."
The deal for the new book was done through Anna Webber at United Agents. Simultaneously Jennifer Jackson at Knopf in the USA and Jennifer Lambert at HarperCollins in Canada also acquired rights in their territories.
