Farshore reissues Gavin's Surya Trilogy and scoops rights to new 'heartbreaking' YA novel

Farshore is reissuing Jamila Gavin’s award-winning Surya Trilogy next month, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the partition of India on 15th August, as well as releasing a “heartbreaking” new novel set during the Second World War.  

The Surya Trilogy was published 30 years ago this year and is set against the backdrop of Indian independence and the partition of India and Pakistan. The trilogy follows Marvinder and Jaspal as they flee from their burnt-out village as civil war rages in the Punjab. 

Gavin’s new novel, Never Forget You, is her first new book with Farshore in 14 years. Cally Poplak, executive publisher, acquired world English rights from Veronique Baxter at David Higham. It publishes on 7th July. It is set in England in 1937, and follows friends Gwen, Noor, Dodo and Vera through the outbreak of the Second World War. The girls find themselves flung to different corners of the war, from the flying planes in the Air Transport Auxiliary to going undercover in the French Resistance.  

The character of Noor is inspired by the real story of Noor Inayat Khan, the daughter of an Indian sultan who became a British spy in the Second World War. She was posthumously awarded the St George’s Cross medal for bravery and in August 2020 became the first woman of South East Asian descent to be awarded a blue memorial plaque in London.  

Gavin said: “It has been a joy to work with Farshore, and especially with Cally Poplak, on Never Forget You. Cally was mentored by the same legendary editor, Miriam Hodgson, who sewed the seed of this book and who, having guided me through the Surya Trilogy, wondered if I could express the issues of the Second World War. Cally too, immediately understood the significance of my four young women: the different backgrounds, religions and views they represented, and the confusion of adolescents with colliding ideologies, trying to find their place in a world unravelling all around them. We see them grow up before our eyes as they try to understand where their loyalties lie.”  

Gavin won the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year award with Coram Boy in 2000. It is now a staple of the classroom, features on the KS3 curriculum and was included in the Lit in Colour Pioneers Programme, which addresses teachers’ calls for greater diversity in the English syllabus. Collins Education published a new study guide last year and Farshore reissued the book with a new cover look in January 2022. 

Poplak added: “I have worked with Jamila since 1995 at Methuen and, over 25 years later, at Farshore, I feel enormous pride to be publishing her gloriously rich and epic Second World War novel, which was inspired by my great mentor Miriam Hodgson and the remarkable life of Noor Inayat Khan. Never Forget You is rich in period detail and atmosphere, a gripping web of stories told through the lives of a marvellous cast of characters that help us use the past to ask questions about the world we live in today.”