J M Originals celebrates 10th anniversary with ‘daring’ debut from Han Smith

J M Originals, an imprint of John Murray Press that is now entering its 10th year, has acquired Han Smith’s debut novel, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking.  

Editor Abigail Scruby bought world rights from Ludo Cinelli at Eve White Literary Agency, to publish on 20th June 2024.

“Portraits is an experimental, daring debut about a young woman who comes of age in a town that is reckoning with its brutal past,” the synopsis says. “Written in 77 ‘portraits’, the novel explores the manipulation and exploitations of history and memory, both political and personal, with masterful invention. It is a novel about silence and speaking out, of forbidden desire and fragile freedom, by a boldly original new voice in fiction.”

Smith said: “Portraits is about vicious manipulations of memory, about histories that are distorted and suppressed, about people caught in the half-light of both seeing and not seeing this — but also about how art and poetry have a vital role to play in an eventual awakening.”