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4th Estate wins rights to 'astounding' poetry collection about life in Gaza in seven-way auction
4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins, has won the rights to a "deeply powerful" début collection of poems about life in Gaza in a hotly contested seven-way auction. The collection by award-winning Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha, will publish in hardback on 7th November.
Kishani Widyaratna, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights across formats from Fiona Baird at WME London, on behalf of Eric Simonoff, WME. North American rights were acquired by John Freeman at Knopf.
After the Israeli army bombed and destroyed Abu Toha’s house, destroying a library he had built for the community, he and his family fled for their safety. Amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems.
Widyaratna said: "Like the many thousands of readers who follow him on social media, I have followed Mosab Abu Toha’s staggering poetry and essays for some time and so it is a great honour to welcome him to the 4th Estate list. These are poems of remarkable skill and profound witness, both in their portrait of life under Israeli occupation and the assault on Gaza and in their moving tribute to Palestinian life and loved ones. It’s our privilege to share them with readers this autumn."
Abu Toha said: "It’s a great honour to see my work published in the UK and to join the exceptional list of authors at 4th Estate. I find it critically important that my poems, which reflect on life and survival, personal and collective, in Palestine and in Gaza in particular, find more and more readers, especially in the UK, where the Balfour Declaration was made in 1917, a declaration that made me and others refugees, suffering until today. My hope is that by sharing my and my people’s stories and pain, peace and justice will prevail in Palestine."
