Hutchinson Heinemann seizes Reilly’s ‘smart, sharp and hilarious’ debut novel 

Rebecca K Reilly’s debut novel, Greta & Valdin, originally published in the author’s native New Zealand, is being brought to the UK by Hutchinson Heinemann. 

Ansa Khan Khattak, senior commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding New Zealand from Martha Perotto-Wills at The Bent Agency. North American rights sold to Amy Guay at Avid Reader Press. Hutchinson Heinemann will publish in the UK in early 2024.

Greta & Valdin has spent over a year in the bestseller chart since it was published in 2021 by Te Herenga Waka University Press, and has won or been shortlisted for multiple awards, such as the 2019 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing. At the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, it was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and received the Hubert Church prize for the best first book of fiction.

Greta & Valdin tells the story of a sister and brother navigating queerness, multiracial identity, and the tendency of their love interests to either not love them back or to leave the country. Through them the reader meets the whole Vladisavljevic family: Māori-Russian-Catalonian, sprawling, as passionate and loving as they are eccentric and over-emotional.

The publisher says: “Reilly’s exploration of love, family, queerness, migration, karaoke, the generational reverberations of colonialism and the disturbing realisation that your parents have a past will have readers falling in love with Greta, Valdin, and all of the Vladisavljevics.”

Reilly said: “It’s a very exciting opportunity for my book to gain a new readership outside my home country and not something I take lightly. I look forward to working with the team at Hutchinson Heinemann and seeing what happens next!”

Khan Khattak commented: “From the very first pages of Greta & Valdin I was hooked. Rebecca makes you root for her characters in the way that only brilliant novelists can. Smart, sharp and hilarious, the novel contains the kinds of twists and turns that the best romantic comedies are made of. It even ends with a wedding. I’m so excited to bringing it to UK readers next year.”