Borough Press pre-empts fertility novel Red Clocks

The Borough Press has pre-empted rights to a novel set in a near future where reproductive rights have been revoked, called Red Clocks.

Borough Press publishing director Suzie Dooré has pre-empted UK and Comonwealth rights (excluding Canada) for the new novel by Leni Zumas from Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at DeFiore and Company.

The novel follows five different women, a single teacher trying to get pregnant; a wife and mother of two in a crumbling marriage, a pregnant teenage girl, a town healer wrongly accused of witchcraft; and a 19th century polar ice explorer. Set in a near future where reproductive rights have been revoked, it explores themes of fertility and motherhood.

Suzie Dooré said: “It feels like I have been looking for a book like Red Clocks for a long time – it’s incredibly smart, darkly funny and completely original, and as a reader it made me think differently about what it means to be a woman, in the same way that The Handmaid’s Tale did. Leni Zumas is a major talent and I’m very excited to be publishing her.”

Zumas has previously published short story collection Farewell Navigator (Open City) and novel The Listeners (Tin House), a finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Award.  Red Clocks has also been pre-empted by Lee Boudreaux for Lee Boudreaux books in the US.

Zumas said: “I am absolutely thrilled that Red Clocks will be published by The Borough Press.  It’s a wonderful list.”