Fitzcarraldo swoops in seven-way auction for Tse debut

Fitzcarraldo Editions has won a seven-way auction for Owlish by Dorothy Tse, its first Chinese aquisition. 

Associate publisher Tamara Sampey-Jawad acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to Tse's first novel from Kelly Falconer at the Asia Literary Agency. North American rights have been sold to Ethan Nosowsky and Anni Liu at Graywolf Press, with simultaneous publication in the UK and US scheduled for spring 2023. The novel will be translated by PEN/Heim-winner Natascha Bruce.

The novel follows the love affair of a disatisfied professor with a doll. The synopsis explains: "Unfulfilled in his marriage and his career, middle-aged Professor Q embarks on a doomed love affair with a doll called Alice. Obsessed with his new love, he fails to notice that sinister forces are encroaching on his city –  until the security of his own life is called into question. Set in an alternate Hong Kong, Owlish is a boldly inventive wake-up call, forcing readers to confront the perils of apathy, complacency and indifference."

Sampey-Jawad said: "Surreal, discomfiting and laced with pitch-black humour, Owlish is a highly ambitious and original exploration of life under oppressive political regimes, and we are thrilled to be welcoming such an unusual, distinctive writer to Fitzcarraldo Editions."

One of the founders of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres, Tse currently lives in Hong Kong, where she teaches creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her awards include the Hong Kong Book Prize, Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award, and the Hong Kong Award for Creative Writing in Chinese. Tse has published five short-story collections in Chinese, and has garnered attention in English since the 2014 publication of her collection Snow and Shadow (Muse), translated by Nicky Harman. With translator Bruce, Tse was a winner of the 2019 Words Without Borders Poems in Translation Prize.