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Siân Hughes’ Booker-longlisted novel Pearl, published by The Indigo Press, is now in it’s third re-printing.
The publisher has reported a "tenfold sales increase" since the Booker longlist announcement on the 1st August 2023. Following the Booker announcement, Pearl enjoyed a 3,728% increase, from seven copies sold to 268. It has since sold 1,682 copies in August through Nielsen’s BookScan, a 2,029% increase on its sales leading up to August.
Pearl follows Marianne, whose mum goes missing when she is eight years old. As years pass, Marianne becomes fixated on her mother’s disappearance and the secrets her father is keeping from her. She finds consolation in the medieval poem "Pearl" and sets out to make a visual illustration of it, a task she never manages to complete.
Rights to Pearl have now been sold in North America to Knopf with editor John Freeman commenting: "Pearl is one of those rare perfect novels – Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping comes to mind — in which things that are vast and unwieldy, like grief and childhood, are rendered with such care and tenderness you can’t help but also feel joy."
Australian rights have been sold to the University of Queenland Press and Indian rights have been sold to Isha Banerji, editor at Pan Macmillan India. The Indigo Press holds world rights from Peter Buckman at the Ampersand Agency and is working with sister company, Marsh Agency, on translation territories.
Hughes is a bookseller and owner of Magpie Books in Malpas, Cheshire.