Fleet acquires Claire Messud’s new novel The Burning Girl

Fleet has acquired American author Claire Messud’s new novel The Burning Girl, to publish in September 2017.

The book, a hot property at 2016's Frankfurt Book Fair, is described by its editor Ursula Doyle as having "special resonance" in today's 'post-truth' times. The plot explores the disintegrating friendship between two teenage girls from different backgrounds.

Messud last published The Woman Upstairs, her fifth novel, with Virago in 2013. 

Doyle, publisher for Fleet, said: "Claire is one of the outstanding writers of her generation, and I am very proud that she has made the move to Fleet. The Burning Girl is a thrilling novel about a ruptured friendship between Julia and Cassie, two teenaged girls of different backgrounds - and about how such stories are complicated and disorderly, resistant to glib interpretation. It is a layered, propulsive novel, rich, daring and haunting, with a special resonance in an era when truth itself is up for grabs."

British and Commonwealth rights in The Burning Girl were acquired from Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency. Jill Bialosky at W. W. Norton will publish in the US.