Story of David and Bathsheba revisited at Scribe

Scribe UK's publisher-at-large Philip Gwyn Jones has pre-emptively acquired world all-languages rights in what he calls an "exceptional" novel from Elizabeth Cook.

Lux is described as a revisiting of the ancient love story of David and Bathsheba "which breathes vivid new life into those mythical representations of intelligence, desire, despair, destiny and remorse, before bringing the reader to a cold stone cell in the Tower of London. There, in the aftermath of the execution of his putative lover Ann Boleyn, languishes courtier-poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, moved to compose his own responses to King David’s psalms of shame and penitence."

Lux is Cook's second novel; her first, Achilles, which Gwyn Jones describes as "much-lauded", was published by Methuen UK in 2001. The author is also a librettist, poet and actress, based in both London and Suffolk. 

Gwyn Jones called Lux - the title refers to a falcon - "a story of faith and fidelity, power and its abuses, love and its flights. It is something like a cathedral of a novel, possessing vast interior space, morally challenging, full of resonant echoes and yet whisperingly intimate. A novel for grown-ups. If the juries are not distracted, it ought to contend for prizes, and should please readers of Hilary Mantel and David Grossman alike."

Rights were acquired from Michelle Kass of MKA and Scribe will publish in spring 2019 in both the UK and Australia.