Europa sells Ferrante's Lying Life audio to PRH

Europa Editions has sold world English language audio rights to Elena Ferrante's latest novel to Penguin Random House Audio. 

Catherine Bucaria and Jennifer Donovan of PRH US acquired the The Lying Life of Adults from Michael Reynolds, Europa's editor-in-chief.  

The Lying Life of Adults is Ferrante's first novel since her global bestselling Neapolitan quartet. It tells the story of Giovanna, whose adolescent crisis sends her in search of an identity she can trust, a search that shows her the two sides of her home city: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. The book was released in Ferrante's native Italy in November where it debuted at number one on the charts and became the country's bestselling novel of 2019 after just two months on sale.   

Europa has been the world English language rights-holder for the superstar pseudonymous author since first publishing her in 2012 and she has shifted £7.5m through Nielsen BookScan UK for the publisher. The Neapolitan quartet audio was produced by Blackstone Audio.     
 
Reynolds said that Europa had fielded many "extremely compelling" offers from other audio publishers but went with PRH for "their willingness to collaborate closely with us to integrate audiobook marketing with our existing marketing plans for the digital and physical editions of Ferrante’s new novel, and the level of enthusiasm that everybody from editorial to production to sales showed for the novel makes them the perfect partner for us to launch what promises to be the biggest literary publication of the year.”  

The Lying Life of Adults will be released in the Anglophone world on 9th June with the English translation by Ann Goldstein, who has translated all of Ferrante's books for Europa.