Jonathan Cape triumphs in nine-way auction for Uyghur poet and filmmaker’s ‘urgent, piercing’ memoir

Jonathan Cape has triumphed in a nine-way auction for an “urgent, piercing memoir” from Uyghur poet and filmmaker Tahir Hamut Izgil. 

Cape acquired UK and Commonwealth rights for Waiting to Be Arrested at Night, translated into English by Joshua L Freeman, from Matthew Marland at Rogers, Coleridge & White on behalf of Adam Eaglin at The Cheney Agency. US and Canadian rights were acquired by Christopher Richards at Penguin Press US. It will be published on 3rd August 2023.  

The book offers “a rare first-hand account of the catastrophic impact of the Chinese government’s mass internment of the Uyghur people and its establishment of the most coercive surveillance regime in human history,” the publisher said. “Waiting to Be Arrested at Night charts, with haunting clarity and poise, the ongoing destruction of a community and a way of life. It is a call for the world to awaken to a humanitarian catastrophe, an unforgettable story of courage, escape and survival, and a moving tribute to Izgil’s friends and fellow Uyghurs, whose voices have been silenced”.