Jonathan Cape signs Pulitzer Prize finalist Heather Clark’s debut novel in exclusive submission

Pulitzer prize finalist Heather Clark’s debut novel The Scrapbook, inspired by the “troubling” WWII scrapbook of her grandfather, has been signed by Vintage imprint Jonathan Cape.

Željka Marošević, editorial director, acquired British Commonwealth rights from Suzanne Smith at PRH US in an exclusive submission. Deb Garrison at Knopf will publish in the US. The Scrapbook will be published in June next year.

Its synopsis reads: “A love affair between two students sparks a reckoning with Germany’s past in this debut novel. Harvard,1996. Anna is about to graduate when she meets Christoph, a German student visiting campus, and falls desperately in love. As she tries to understand the young, elegant man who fascinates her, he reveals his country to her over two summers.

“Germany is still reckoning with the Holocaust and its pretty new squares and grand facades belie its recent history and the war’s destruction. Christoph condemns his country’s actions but remains vague about the part his own grandparents played. Anna’s grandfather, meanwhile, was an American GI who took photos of the end of the war, photos that capture its horror, preserved in a scrapbook only Anna has seen. Anna wants to believe in Christoph and the future he promises her but as their relationship becomes increasingly unsettling, she must face up to everything she has been unwilling to see, and everything Christoph has chosen to ignore.”

Marošević said: “The Scrapbook is a sunlit, sleek and compelling novel that reminded me of the work of Annie Ernaux and Deborah Levy. This is not a ‘WWII novel’ in the traditional sense but a gripping tale of first love, laced with a backstory of dark family legacies and historical conscience. I read it in one unnerving gulp.”

Heather Clark is the author of three works of nonfiction, including Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Jonathan Cape), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was the winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize and the Truman Capote Prize, awarded by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Clark said: “I am thrilled Jonathan Cape will be publishing The Scrapbook, and honoured to join a list of novelists that includes Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje and Anne Enright. This ‘European’ novel is in the best of hands with Zeljka Marošević and her team.”