Quercus acquires 'alternative post-war history' from C J Carey

Quercus will publish C J Carey's Widowland, a feminist dystopian novel set in a 1950s Nazi-ruled Britain.

Jane Wood, publisher, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Caradoc King at United Agents. Quercus will publish Widowland as lead title in June 2021. 

The synopsis says: "Rose Ransom belongs to an elite caste of women and works at the Ministry of Culture, rewriting literature to correct the views of the past. This is a world where the great novels by women are too famous to be banned, so they must be censored and rewritten, and their influence controlled. But now Rose has been given a new task. Across the country, graffiti is being daubed on public buildings. Disturbingly, the graffiti is made up of lines from forbidden works, subversive words from the voices of women. Suspicion has fallen on Widowland, the run-down slums where childless women over 50—of no use to the Protectorate—have been banished. Before the Leader arrives for the Coronation ceremony of King Edward and Queen Wallis, Rose must infiltrate Widowland to find the source of this rebellion and ensure it is quashed."

Wood commented: "I was blown away by this richly imagined and totally convincing portrait of what 1950s Britain might have been like as a German Protectorate, where the role and status of women is of special interest to those in power. Within a thrilling narrative of revenge and redemption, C J Carey has pictured every detail of how such a society might have been, and readers will cheer as the heroine Rose Ransom wins through in the end."

C J Carey is a pen name for an acclaimed novelist whose identity will be disclosed prior to publication, says the publisher.