Fitzcarraldo Editions scoops Polly Barton's début novel What Am I, A Deer?

Fitzcarraldo Editions has scooped Polly Barton’s début novel What Am I, A Deer?.

Publisher Jacques Testard has acquired UK, European and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to the book, from Angelique Tran Van Sang at Felicity Bryan on exclusive submission and will publish in Spring 2026.

The book tells the story of a young woman who moves to Frankfurt to start a job at a gaming company. "A novel of ideas about relationships, obsession, authenticity and—of course—karaoke, What Am I, A Deer? explores how to be in the world when you don’t quite fit in," the synopsis says. It is the author’s third book after Fifty Sounds (Fitzcarraldo Editions), winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and Porn: An Oral History (Fitzcarraldo Editions).

Barton is also a Japanese literary translator and has translated Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate), among other books. "Working with Fitzcarraldo these last few years has only strengthened my sense that they really are the publisher of dreams, and I am continually filled with admiration for their contribution to the world of Anglophone literature," she said. "I could not be happier to be making my first foray into fiction with Jacques and the Fitzcarraldo team."

Testard added: "What Am I, A Deer? is an extraordinary, uncategorizable work of fiction—imagine an emo Thomas Bernhard grappling with Hetian themes. Polly Barton is mindboggingly good at developing an idea or feeling through narrative, and at rendering on the page the complexities of being a human, and all the paradoxes and compromises and constraints this condition entails."