Cape bags 'international sensation' The Altruists

Jonathan Cape has acquired debut novel The Altruists by 25-year-old Andrew Ridker it is championing as "an international sensation" after a spate of worldwide deals closed over the past two weeks.

Michal Shavit, publishing director at Jonathan Cape, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to the novel in a deal with Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White, just ahead of the London Book Fair. Within two weeks the book has sold in 20 countries, with multiple auctions around the world.

The Altruists, said to be "as entertaining as it is heartbreaking", spans three decades in the life of one family, leading up to a homecoming in which the father calls his two adult children back to St. Louis to ask for a share of the inheritance they received from their late mother.

The book was sold in America to Allison Lorentzen at Viking, in a pre-empt. Cape will publish in Spring 2019.

Ridker grew up outside of Boston, attended Washington University in St. Louis and spent a year at Oxford. He now lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In 2014 he edited a poetry anthology featuring work by Robert Pinsky, Jorie Graham, and John Ashbery, Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics, published with Boston-based independent Black Ocean. According to Cape, he has also written about Kanye West for arts and politics magazine Guernica and profiled drag queens for St. Louis Magazine. 

Shavit said: "It is rare to come across a voice as accomplished and original as Andrew Ridker's. This novel is as entertaining as it is heartbreaking, and it has all the makings of an international sensation."