Fourth Estate snaps up Armfield’s ‘stunning’ second novel in exclusive submission

Fourth Estate has acquired Julia Armfield’s second novel, Private Rites, which follows three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.

Kishani Widyaratna, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, in physical, digital and audio from Sam Copeland at RCW in an exclusive submission. North American rights went to Caroline Bleeke at Flatiron.

Private Rites will be published in the UK in hardback in June 2024 and is pitched as "King Lear" meets Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel (Picador). Our Wives Under the Sea, published by Picador, was an Indie Book of the Month and has, according to Fourth Estate, sold over 80,000 units in the English language worldwide.

The new novel’s synopsis reads: “It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves and the cities have retreated to higher storeys. As old places have disappeared, arcane rituals have crept back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, they find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.

“As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Soon it becomes clear that others have also taken an interest in both his estate and in them, and that perhaps their inheritance may not be theirs alone."

Widyaratna said: “It is a great pleasure to welcome Julia Armfield to Fourth Estate. She is one of the most exciting writing talents to have emerged in recent years: a formidable master of suspense, a supreme stylist, an emotionally profound storyteller and a singular chronicler of queer love and life, both in our world and beyond. Private Rites is a novel of devastating beauty and haunting resonance, and all of us at Fourth Estate can’t wait to share it with readers everywhere."

Armfield said: “I feel extremely grateful for the luck I’ve had so far and the readers I’ve been able to reach with my first two books—I can only hope that Private Rites continues to resonate with them. Kishani was my very first editor and I couldn’t be more fortunate to be working with her and with Caroline at Flatiron again.”

Armfield’s work has been published in Granta, the White Review and Best British Short Stories 2019 and 2021. In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award. She was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Award 2018, and won the White Review Short Story Prize 2018 and a Pushcart Prize in 2020. She is the author of Salt Slow (Picador), a collection of short stories, which was longlisted for the Polari Prize 2020 and the Edge Hill Prize 2020. Her debut novel, Our Wives Under The Sea, was shortlisted for the Foyles Fiction Book of the Year Award 2022 and shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2023.