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Hutchinson Heinemann has signed Sebastian Faulks’ new novel, The Seventh Son, described by the publisher as “an exhilarating examination of what it is to be human".
Venetia Butterfield, managing director of Cornerstone acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander. Hutchinson Heinemann will publish on 7th September 2023.
The Seventh Son is Faulks’ first contemporary novel since A Week in December (Huchinson Heinemann, 2009). It follows a young woman named Talissa who decides to carry a child through a series of IVF treatments administered by the billionaire-owned Parn Institute. But when the child, Seth, is born to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, no one knows he is set to upend the human race as we know it.
Faulks, who is the author of 19 novels including Birdsong and Human Traces, said: “The Seventh Son came to me as a bolt from the blue. Keeping control of the plot was sometimes like riding a bucking bronco. It’s quite unlike anything I’ve written before. Though when you come to think about it, perhaps all my books are really about the staggering strangeness of humanity.”
Butterfield said: “The Seventh Son sees a master storyteller ask the pressing questions of our age with extraordinary insight and imagination. Epic in scale and alive with themes of unrequited love and unearned power, readers will be gripped.”