4th Estate wins eight-way auction for satirical campus novel by Missouri Williams

4th Estate has acquired The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams following an eight-way auction.

Williams is the Prague-based author of The Doloriad, published in 2022 by Dead Ink Books, which won the Republic of Consciousness Prize. 4th Estate publishing director Kishani Widyaratna acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to The Vivisectors from John Ash at Creative Artists Agency (CAA) London. North American rights went to Jackson Howard at Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), and further rights deals include German rights to DTV in a pre-empt, Italian rights to NN Editore in a pre-empt, and French rights to Christian Bourgois.

The Vivisectors, which the publisher described as a “satirical campus novel”, will be published in hardback in spring 2026. Williams said: “When writing The Vivisectors, I was thinking about the problem of interpretation, how we read the world and others. I became very interested in metaphor and scepticism. No one was more surprised than me when I turned out to be writing a love story. This is a book that’s very close to my heart, and so I’m so happy that it will be published by 4th Estate in the UK and FSG in the US. I can’t wait to work with Kishani and Jackson.”

Widyaratna said: “Missouri Williams is an utterly unique writer and a dazzling mind, and to read her is to witness sparks fly on the page. The Vivisectors is a politically incisive, morally profound, stylistically sublime novel that delights with its gallows humour and unexpected heart. This is an exciting next step for Missouri and we are thrilled to welcome her to the list.”