Doubleday snaps up 'tender' debut novel by Dinan in five-way auction

Doubleday has snapped up an “honest, wry and tender” debut novel by Nicola Dinan in a five-way auction. 

Bobby Mostyn-Owen, commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to Bellies from Monica MacSwan at Aitken Alexander. A publication date has not yet been set.

The synopsis says: “It begins as your typical boy meets boy. At a drag night in a university town, Tom meets Ming. Ming is what Tom wants and wants to be: a promising young playwright; confident and witty and a perfect antidote to Tom’s awkward energy. They fall hard for each other, but when Ming announces her decision to transition, the pair must confront that love may not be enough.  

“Bellies centres on Ming’s transition and life as a woman, but it’s also the story of how Tom grows up and becomes a man. It’s a story about love and heartbreak, but also the possibilities of queer friendship. Its characters talk and worry about their bodies, drugs, health, art and responsibility, but ultimately they are most concerned with how to care for the people who know them most intimately.” 

Mostyn-Owen said: “Like Hollinghurst for a new generation, I loved Bellies from its first page. Nicola writes with humour, precision and complexity about the messiness of answering that most universal question—‘who do I want to be?’ Bellies is sexy, intelligent, funny, heart-breaking, and Nicola is clearly a star with a bright, long career ahead of her. I am thrilled to welcome her to the Doubleday list.” 

Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, and now calls London home. Bellies is her first novel, for which she was shortlisted for the Mo Siewcharran Prize. She is a graduate of the Faber Academy Writing A Novel course.

She said: “Bellies has become a part of me, like an extra limb, or even a second belly. Bobby and the Doubleday team’s enthusiasm for the novel moved me so deeply—I can’t quite imagine a better home for it.” 

MacSwan added: “By writing a coming-of-age story told through the framework of transition, Nicola moves the genre forward by casting a novel perspective on the way young people today process the anxieties we all have about growth, and change. But it is also wildly funny, and I know readers will love being in the world of Tom and Ming so expertly crafted by Nicola.”