Hutchinson Heinemann signs North’s ‘dazzling’ début about love, genius and alternate universes  

Hutchinson Heinemann has signed In Universes, the “dazzling” début novel by Em North about love, genius and alternate universes.

Ansa Khan Khattak, senior commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Ren Balcombe and Will Francis at Janklow & Nesbit UK, on behalf of PJ Mark and Hafizah Geter at Janklow US. Emma Kupor at Harper will publish in the US. This is Khan Khattak’s first acquisition since joining Hutchinson Heinemann and the novel will be published in spring 2024.

In Universes tells the story of Raffi, a physicist who spends her days in a male-dominated lab looking for dark matter and thinking about the existence of parallel universes. Every chance she gets, she escapes to see Britt, a queer artist who she’s magnetically drawn to.

Britt doesn’t know that they almost met before – Raffi saw her when they were children, but never had the courage to say hello. But what if Raffi had said hello? Through In Universes we get to see the different ways Raffi’s life would have turned out had things been just a little different – who they would have been and who they would have loved. Some of the universes we visit are strange – monstrous, even – but everything eventually leads back to the summer of Britt: the girl that she loved, but eventually betrayed – the terrible thing Raffi did and the guilt that chases them across realities.

North said: “In Universes is a book for anyone who’s ever chased the idea of genius, struggled to find their own identity, or wondered how their life might have turned out had they done things just a little differently. It’s the culmination of a decade of studying physics, philosophy and writing, and I’m beyond thrilled to be working with Ansa Khan Khattak and Hutchinson Heinemann to bring the book to readers in the UK.”

Khan Khattak commented: “In Universes is a love story, broken into multiple love stories, a tale of what if. I’ve always loved the idea of parallel universes, but specifically the idea that despite an endless number of worlds, there could be an event so profound that its effects would ripple out and find you everywhere. You can’t help but root for Raffi: a flawed human being, looking for human connection in any world.”

North has an Sc.B. with Honors in mathematical physics and a BA in philosophy from Brown University, where they wrote their thesis on the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics and worked for an observational cosmology lab on a grant from Nasa. 

They received their MFA in fiction from Johns Hopkins University, where they were awarded the Benjamin T Sankey Fellowship for a graduating student. Their work has appeared in Conjunctions, the Threepenny Review, Lightspeed, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Catapult, and elsewhere, and has received mentions in Best American Essays and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy.