Atlantic bags 'gorgeous' debut from Grudova in two-book deal

Atlantic Books has acquired Camilla Grudova's Children of Paradise, a "stunning" debut novel exploring the lives of cinema workers and sex.

The publisher acquired UK Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Sophie Scard at United Agents. Children of Paradise will be published in hardback, trade paper back and e-book in June 2022.

"When Holly applies for a job at the Paradise — one of the city’s oldest cinemas, squashed into the ground floor of a block of flats — she thinks it will be like any other shift work," the synopsis explains. "She cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, avoids the belligerent old owner, Iris, and is ignored by her aloof but tight-knit colleagues who seem as much a part of the building as its fraying carpets and endless dirt. Dreadful, lonely weeks pass while she longs for their approval, a silent voyeur. 

"So when she finally gains the trust of this cryptic band of oddballs, Holly transforms from silent drudge to rebellious insider and gradually she too becomes part of the Paradise — unearthing its secrets, learning its history and haunting its corridors after hours with the other ushers. It is no surprise when violence strikes, tempers change and the group, eyes still affixed to the screen, starts to rapidly go awry."

Grudova lives in Edinburgh and holds a degree in art history and German from McGill University, Montreal. Her fiction has appeared in the White Review and Granta, and her critically acclaimed debut collection, The Doll's Alphabet (Fitzcarraldo Editions) was published in 2017.

"I am ecstatic to find a home at Atlantic Books and writing more weird things," she said. 

Publishing director for Atlantic Fiction James Roxburgh said: "Credit to my former colleague Bobby Mostyn-Owen for bringing Camilla to Atlantic, but their enthusiasm very much represented the rest of the company’s: Camilla is a stunning, original writer, and her novel is a gorgeous, surrealist take on cineastes and sex, misfit friendships and corporate exploitation. It’s as if Angela Carter had written The Dreamers, and we’re hugely proud to give such an inventive writer a long-term home."