W&N buys Honeywell debut

Weidenfeld & Nicolson deputy publishing director Arzu Tahsin has bought world rights in a "mind-blowing" debut by Antonia Honeywell.

Tahsin bought The Ship from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown; Honeywell was a student on Curtis Brown Creative's 2011 novel-writing course.

The Ship is described as "rites-of-passage novel, a love story and a high-concept thriller", telling the story of a world in collapse, where a wealthy man buys a huge ship to transport a handpicked group of 500 – including his 16-year-old daughter - to a safe destiny. However daughter Lalla begins to question and then challenge her tyrannical father as the ship approaches its destination.

Tahsin called the book "a dystopian novel with a utopian heart that will appeal across genres and age-ranges", planning to publish in February 2015.

Honeywell is the fifth student from Curtis Brown Creative's novel-writing courses to secure a deal, following S D Sykes (historical novel Plague Land sold to Hodder & Stoughton), Jake Woodhouse (crime thriller After the Silence sold to Michael Joseph), Jessie Burton (novel The Miniaturist sold to Picador) and Tim Glencross (social satire Barbarians sold to Fourth Estate).