Europa swoops for Chidgey's magpie-narrated novel

Europa Editions has landed The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey, a novel narrated by a talking magpie.

Editorial director Christopher Potter obtained world English rights, excluding New Zealand, from Caroline Dawnay at United Agents. The novel will be published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in New Zealand. 

According to the publisher, The Axeman’s Carnival is a “profound, sometimes humorous, always gripping” story of the bird’s transformative effect on the life of a couple living a hardscrabble life in rural New Zealand.

Chidgey’s novel Remote Sympathy (Europa Editions), which is set in Buchenwald concentration camp, has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize and NZ’s Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize.

“We live next to farmland and each morning when I opened my writing-room window I heard the Australian magpies’ flute-like song,” Chidgey said. “One of the world’s most melodious birds, they are remarkable mimics, and as I listened from my desk Tama’s story began to take shape, spoken in his own voice, with all its idiosyncratic flourishes and rhythms. I had a huge amount of fun teaching Tama to speak the language of his human captors/saviours and I’m delighted that Europa is enabling him to address an international audience.”

The Axeman’s Carnival will be published on 16th March 2023.